Climate Change

Climate Change

Climate Change

Climate and Climate Change

Just like weather, climate represents the atmospheric conditions in the context of factors like rainfall, wind, and temperature. However, while weather refers to the state of atmosphere gauged in weeks, days, or hours, climate is the average weather conditions gauged over a prolonged term, that is; decades, years, or months. In addition, climate takes into compass variability as well; the frequency of extreme weather conditions, for instance. Climate Change can be described as any process that modifies a climate system, but today the phrase is most frequently employed as a short hand for man-made global warming.

Man Made Global Warming

While it has been confirmed by the most respected scientific entities of the world that the world is getting warmer, it has also been established evidence for the fact that the people living in it are causing this. Strong evidence has been presented by the Royal Society that human activities have been responsible for the Earth being warmer since the last fifty years, for instance the variations in land use, burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and agriculture. Activities by human beings cause massive volumes of greenhouse gases to be released into the air, yearly. Heat is captured by these gases which would break out into the space otherwise - the correspondent of enfolding the planet in an invisible blanket. The climate of the planet has always been in flux, which is due to the natural drivers like volcanic or solar activity, or cycles related to the orbit of Earth round the sun. Nevertheless, the global warming recorded so far corresponds to the pattern of global warming which could be expected from the development of greenhouse gases in the air, instead of other probable gases (www.theguardian.com).

Is the world really getting warmer?

The world is indeed getting warmer with the passage of time as agreed by the global scientific community. The scientific community presents strong evidence that the air temperatures are rising along with the subsurface ocean temperatures, and that several biological and physical systems are changing, glaciers are retreating, and the average global sea levels are changing. Stating differently, earth is getting hotter as shown by the temperature readings borne out by shifting wildlife, longer growing seasons, retreating glaciers and snow cover, and rising sea levels. The fact that the planet earth is getting hotter obviously does not imply that is climate change is uniform. The long standing increase in temperature is impacted by short-term factors, like variations in solar cycles, and regional cycles like oscillations amid La Niña and El Niño conditions in the Pacific. On the other hand, in many areas like the Arctic, the global warming is taking place at a faster pace comparatively (www.theguardian.com).

Impacts of Climate Change for the UK

Since the 1970s, temperatures have escalated in the UK almost by one degree with the greenhouse gas levels already present in the atmosphere. This proves that over the coming thirty years or so, further warming is inevitable. The rate of warming would be dependent ...