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Global warming is a significant and rapidly accelerating issue caused by human activities, such as greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and the burning of fossil fuels. It is having a profound impact on the environment and our planet.
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate.
This has led to increases in mean global temperature, or global warming. The likely range of human-induced surface-level air warming by 2010–2019 compared to levels in 1850–1900 is 0.8 °C to 1.3 °C, with a best estimate of 1.07 °C. This is close to the observed overall warming during that time of 0.9 °C to 1.2 °C.
Experts can often attribute the intensity of individual heat waves to global warming. Some extreme events would have been nearly impossible without human influence on the climate system. A heatwave that would occur once every ten years before global warming started now occurs 2.8 times as often.
2 days ago · This article provides an overview of the scientific background related to the subject of global warming. It considers the causes of rising near-surface air temperatures, the influencing factors, the process of climate research and forecasting, and the possible ecological and social impacts of rising temperatures.
- Human activity affects global surface temperatures by changing Earth’s radiative balance—the “give and take” between what comes in during the day a...
- Global warming, the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries, happens mostly in th...
- Continued global warming is expected to impact everything from energy use to water availability to crop productivity throughout the world. Poor cou...
- Polar bears live in the Arctic, where they use the region’s ice floes as they hunt seals and other marine mammals. Temperature increases related to...
Climate change this century and last century is sometimes called global warming, because the average temperature on the surface has risen. The last decade (2011–2020) was the warmest on record, and each of the last four decades has been warmer than any previous decade since 1850.
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate.
