CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying, and wildlife is
scrambling to keep pace. It has become clear that humans have caused most of the
past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern
lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than at any time in the
last 800,000 years.
We often call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the
Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place.
While many people think of global warming and climate change as synonyms,
scientists use “climate change” when describing the complex shifts now affecting
our planet’s weather and climate systems—in part because some areas actually get
cooler in the short term.
Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also
extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas, and
a range of other impacts. All of those changes are emerging as humans continue to
add heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, changing the rhythms of
climate that all living things have come to rely on.
What will we do—what can we do—to slow this human-caused warming? How
will we cope with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to
figure it all out, the fate of the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms, and
snow-capped mountains—hangs in the balance.
The "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's
atmosphere trap heat. These gases let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the
glass walls of a greenhouse, hence the name.
Sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where the energy is absorbed and then
radiate back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, greenhouse gas
molecules trap some of the heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more
greenhouse gases concentrate in the atmosphere, the more heat gets locked up in
the molecules.
Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, when Joseph
Fourier calculated that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere.
This natural greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it,
the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees
Celsius) cooler.
In 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could
enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. He
kicked off 100 years of climate research that has given us a sophisticated
understanding of global warming.
Levels of greenhouse gases have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but
they had been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average
temperatures had also stayed fairly constant over that time—until the past 150
years. Through the burning of fossil fuels and other activities that have emitted
large amounts of greenhouse gases, particularly over the past few decades, humans
are now enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth significantly, and in
ways that promise many effects, scientists warn.
The rapid rise in greenhouse gases is a problem because it’s changing the climate
faster than some living things can adapt to. Also, a new and more unpredictable
climate poses unique challenges to all life.
Historically, Earth's climate has regularly shifted between temperatures like those
we see today and temperatures cold enough to cover much of North America and
Europe with ice. The difference between average global temperatures today and
during those ice ages is only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), and
the swings have tended to happen slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years.
But with concentrations of greenhouse gases rising, Earth's remaining ice sheets
such as Greenland and Antarctica are starting to melt too. That extra water could
raise sea levels significantly, and quickly. By 2050, sea levels are predicted to rise
between one and 2.3 feet as glaciers melt.
As the mercury rises, the climate can change in unexpected ways. In addition to
sea levels rising, weather can become more extreme. This means more intense
major storms, more rain followed by longer and drier droughts—a challenge for
growing crops—changes in the ranges in which plants and animals can live, and
loss of water supplies that have historically come from glaciers.
