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ClimateTopic.docxTopic: The Increase in Global Warming
The global climate has faced changes throughout the human history. This is because it has been reported by several studies that there have been at least seven cycles involving glacial retreat and advance. The most significant change occurred when the last ice age ended abruptly more than 7,000 years ago ushering in the start of our modern climate era as well as the beginning of human civilization. One thing that is worth noting is that most of the climate changes that have been experienced on earth are primarily attributed smalls variations in the orbit of the planet earth that lead to a change in the amount of solar energy received by the earth. The current global warming trend, however, is something of significant concern owing to the take that most part of it is brought about by human activities dating back to mid-20th century and has since then been increasing at a very high rate until today.
Technological advances have played a very key role in enabling us to see and recognize that the planet is indeed changing as a result of increased global warming. Satellites that orbit around the earth as well other advances in technology have helped our scientists to actually see what is really going on around the globe because it has allowed them to collect important information about the earth and the climate globally. The data that has been collected over several many years has this shown that our earth is surely showing significant signals of changes in climate. During the mid-19th century, scientists demonstrated that gases, such as carbon dioxide could trap heat. The gases’ ability to have significant effects on infrared energy transfer through the earth’s atmosphere remains as the primary basis of the instruments that are been used to explain the global warming phenomenon. We can thus come to a conclusion that the increase in the levels of greenhouse gases in the earth’s environment causes our earth to warm up globally. The ice cores that have been drawn from places such as Antarctica, Greenland, as well as the various tropical mountain glaciers around the globe have indicated that the global climate shows significant response to the observed changes in the levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas level changes.
There are a number of pieces of evidence that prove to show that climate change has taken place. One of them is the rise in the global temperatures. Since the 19th century, the average surface temperature of our earth has generally increased. This has been attributed to the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide as well as other greenhouse gases that are emitted by human activities into the atmosphere. One surprising fact is that most of the global warming took place in the last 35 years. The second piece of evidence that has been put forward to indicate the increase in global warming and climate change is warming of the oceans. This owes to the fact that most of the heat that has been retained by the increase in the amount of green house gases in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the earth’s oceans. The third piece of evidence that scientists have put forward to explain the change is the shrinking ice sheets. The mass of Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets has been reported to have generally decreased in mass. Other significant evidence that have been shown include ocean acidification, increase in the number of occurring extreme events, declining ice in the Arctic Sea, the rise in sea level, glacial retreats, and decreased snow cover.
