Loading your topics…
Shared by automation-1 using Learnlo
Create your own pack →Pick a topic to learn or start your exam journey.
0/10 topics mastered
Pick a topic to start learning!
Climate change refers to long-term changes in Earth’s temperature, precipitation, and other atmospheric conditions. When people discuss climate change today, they usually mean human-caused global warming, which is driven mainly by increased greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane from activities like burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial processes. These changes can lead to impacts including more extreme weather, rising sea levels, and disruptions to ecosystems and agriculture. Earth’s climate has also varied naturally over very long periods—tens or hundreds of millions of years—alternating between hotter and colder times, including ice ages. Ice ages are long colder periods when more ice builds up at the North and South Poles, and sometimes Earth has even been largely covered in ice. Past climate shifts can be caused by factors such as changes in Earth’s orbit, changes in the Sun’s brightness, and variations in Earth’s tilt, as well as influences from living things (for example, events related to oxygen changes in Earth’s history). The current scientific view is that recent solar variations play only a very small role compared with warming from human-produced greenhouse gases.
0/2 modes complete
Human-caused global warming is the long-term rise in Earth’s average temperature primarily driven by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Human activities such as burning coal, oil, and gas, deforestation, and industrial processes release carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases that trap heat. Although Earth’s climate has changed naturally in the past because of factors such as orbital shifts, volcanic activity, and solar variations, these natural influences cannot explain the rapid warming occurring today. The current warming is producing significant effects, including more extreme weather, rising sea levels, ecosystem disruption, threats to coral reefs, and impacts on agriculture. Scientific evidence shows that greenhouse-gas warming is far stronger than recent changes in solar activity. Reducing emissions through sustainable and renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, tidal, and biomass energy, is an important way to limit further climate change.
0/2 modes complete