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Effects of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation in Australia are present across most of Australia, particularly the north and the east, and are one of the main climate drivers of the country. Associated with seasonal abnormality in many areas in the world, Australia is one of the continents most affected and experiences extensive droughts ...
One of the hotter periods was the Last Interglacial, around 125,000 years ago, where temperatures were between 0.5 °C and 1.5 °C warmer than before the start of global warming. [40] This period saw sea levels 5 to 10 metres higher than today. The most recent glacial maximum 20,000 years ago was some 5–7 °C colder. This period has sea ...
Upper regions of the atmosphere have been cooling contemporaneously with a warming in the lower atmosphere, confirming the action of the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion. [ 136 ] Observed regional climatic variations confirm predictions concerning ongoing changes, for example, by contrasting (smoother) year-to-year global variations with ...
After about a year, the temperature could rebound by about 6 °C, but by this time about one-third of the Northern Hemisphere might be covered in ice. [3] However, this effect could be largely mitigated, even reversed, by a release of enormous quantities of water vapor and carbon dioxide caused by the initial global heat pulse after the impact.
Human impact on the environment. From top left, clockwise: satellite image of Southeast Asian haze; IAEA experts investigate the Fukushima disaster; a seabird during an oil spill; depiction of deforestation of Brazil's Atlantic forest by Portuguese settlers, c. 1820 –25; acid mine drainage in the Rio Tinto; industrial fishing in 1997, a practice that has led to overfishing.
Although much CO 2 in the early atmosphere of the young Earth was produced by volcanic activity, modern volcanic activity releases only 130 to 230 megatonnes of CO 2 each year. [55] From the human pre-industrial era to 1940, the terrestrial biosphere represented a net source of atmospheric CO 2 (driven largely by land-use changes), but ...
The high-accuracy measurements of atmospheric CO 2 concentration, initiated by Charles David Keeling in 1958, constitute the master time series documenting the changing composition of the atmosphere. [37] These data, known as the Keeling Curve, have iconic status in climate change science as evidence of the effect of human activities on the ...
The sharp acceleration in CO 2 emissions since 2000 to more than a 3% increase per year (more than 2 ppm per year) from 1.1% per year during the 1990s is attributable to the lapse of formerly declining trends in carbon intensity of both developing and developed nations. China was responsible for most of global growth in emissions during this ...