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The scientific community has been investigating the causes of climate change for decades. After thousands of studies, the scientific consensus is that it is "unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land since pre-industrial times."
A related phenomenon driven by climate change is woody plant encroachment, affecting up to 500 million hectares globally. [218] Climate change has contributed to the expansion of drier climate zones, such as the expansion of deserts in the subtropics. [219] The size and speed of global warming is making abrupt changes in ecosystems more likely ...
Climate change causes sea ice to melt, transforming the Arctic from an icy desert into an open ocean. Polar bears and seals may lose their habitats, phytoplankton growth may increase and fuel the Arctic food web , which may lead to higher carbon burial rates and possibly decrease the amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere.
This interactive class challenges students to understand the climatic and environmental changes currently facing our planet. Understanding the causes of global climate and environmental change requires knowledge of the Earth system, its climate, the mechanisms that force climate and the human activities that affect the magnitude and direction of some of these forcing mechanisms.
It has its origins in the World Climate Research Programme, or WCRP, an international program under the leadership of Peter Bolin, which at the time of its establishment in 1980 focused on determining if the climate is changing, can it be predicted and do humans cause the change. The first results not only confirmed human impact but led to the ...
Positive climate change feedbacks amplify changes in the climate system, and can lead to destabilizing effects for the climate. [2] An increase in temperature from greenhouse gases leading to increased water vapor (which is itself a greenhouse gas) causing further warming is a positive feedback, but not a runaway effect, on Earth. [ 13 ]
As the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear, while the planet has so far seen an average temperature rise of 1.2 degrees Celsius and will ...
Deforestation is a primary contributor to climate change, [1] [2] and climate change affects the health of forests. [3] Land use change, especially in the form of deforestation, is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions from human activities, after the burning of fossil fuels.