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Global Warming
Throughout its long history, Earth has warmed and cooled time and again. Climate has changed when the planet received more or less sunlight due to subtle shifts in its orbit, as the atmosphere or surface changed, or when the Sun’s energy varied. But in the past century, another force has started to influence Earth’s climate: humanity.
(NASA astronaut photograph ISS022-E-6674. )
What is Global Warming?
Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels.
How Does Today’s Warming Compare to Past Climate Change?
Earth has experienced climate change in the past without help from humanity. But the current climatic warming is occurring much more rapidly than past warming events.
Why Do Scientists Think Current Warming Isn’t Natural?
In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural causes unrelated to human activity. These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades.
How Much More Will Earth Warm?
Models predict that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise, and Earth’s average surface temperature will rise with them. Based on plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century. Some of this warming will occur even if future greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, because the Earth system has not yet fully adjusted to environmental changes we have already made.
How Will Earth Respond to Warming Temperatures?
The impact of global warming is far greater than just increasing temperatures. Warming modifies rainfall patterns, amplifies coastal erosion, lengthens the growing season in some regions, melts ice caps and glaciers, and alters the ranges of some infectious diseases. Some of these changes are already occurring.
References and Related Resources
Throughout its long history, Earth has warmed and cooled time and again. Climate has changed when the planet received more or less sunlight due to subtle shifts in its orbit, as the atmosphere or surface changed, or when the Sun’s energy varied. But in the past century, another force has started to influence Earth’s climate: humanity
How does this warming compare to previous changes in Earth’s climate? How can we be certain that human-released greenhouse gases are causing the warming? How much more will the Earth warm? How will Earth respond? Answering these questions is perhaps the most significant scientific challenge of our time.
Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released as people burn fossil fuels. The global average surface temperature rose 0.6 to 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.1 to 1.6° F) between 1906 and 2005, and the rate of temperature increase has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. Temperatures are certain to go up further.
Despite ups and downs from year to year, global average surface temperature is rising. By the beginning of the 21st century, Earth’s temperature was roughly 0.5 degrees Celsius above the long-term (1951–1980) average. (NASA figure adapted from Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis. )
Earth’s natural greenhouse effect
Earth’s temperature begins with the Sun. Roughly 30 percent of incoming sunlight is reflected back into space by bright surfaces like clouds and ice. Of the remaining 70 percent, most is absorbed by the land and ocean, and the rest is absorbed by the atmosphere. The absorbed solar energy heats our planet.
As the rocks, the air, and the seas warm, they radiate “heat” energy (thermal infrared radiation). From the surface, this energy travels into the atmosphere where much of it is absorbed by water vapor and long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
When they absorb the energy radiating from Earth’s surface, microscopic water or greenhouse gas molecules turn into tiny heaters— like the bricks in a fireplace, they radiate heat even after the fire goes out. They radiate in all directions. The energy that radiates back toward Earth heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface, enhancing the heating they get from direct sunlight.
This absorption and radiation of heat by the atmosphere—the natural greenhouse effect—is beneficial for life on Earth. If there were no greenhouse effect, the Earth’s average surface temperature would be a very chilly -18°C (0°F) instead of the comfortable 15°C (59°F) that it is today.
See Climate and Earth’s Energy Budget to read more about how sunlight fuels Earth’s climate.
The enhanced greenhouse effect
What has scientists concerned now is that over the past 250 years, humans have been artificially raising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate, mostly by burning fossil fuels, but also from cutting down carbon-absorbing forests. Since the Industrial Revolution began in about 1750, carbon dioxide levels have increased nearly 38 percent as of 2009 and methane levels have increased 148 percent.
Increases in concentrations of carbon dioxide (top) and methane (bottom) coincided with the start of the Industrial Revolution in about 1750. Measurements from Antarctic ice cores (green lines) combined with direct atmospheric measurements (blue lines) show the increase of both gases over time. (NASA graphs by Robert Simmon, based on data from the NOAA Paleoclimatology and Earth System Research Laboratory. )
The atmosphere today contains more greenhouse gas molecules, so more of the infrared energy emitted by the surface ends up being absorbed by the atmosphere. Since some of the extra energy from a warmer atmosphere radiates back down to the surface, Earth’s surface temperature rises. By increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases, we are making Earth’s atmosphere a more efficient greenhouse.
How is Today’s Warming Different from the Past?
Earth has experienced climate change in the past without help from humanity. We know about past climates because of evidence left in tree rings, layers of ice in glaciers, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. For example, bubbles of air in glacial ice trap tiny samples of Earth’s atmosphere, giving scientists a history of greenhouse gases that stretches back more than 800,000 years. The chemical make-up of the ice provides clues to the average global temperature.
See the Earth Observatory’s series Paleoclimatology for details about how scientists study past climates.
Glacial ice and air bubbles trapped in it (top) preserve an 800,000-year record of temperature & carbon dioxide. Earth has cycled between ice ages (low points, large negative anomalies) and warm interglacials (peaks). (Photograph courtesy National Snow & Ice Data Center. NASA graph by Robert Simmon, based on data from Jouzel et al., 2007. )
Using this ancient evidence, scientists have built a record of Earth’s past climates, or “paleoclimates.” The paleoclimate record combined with global models shows past ice ages as well as periods even warmer than today. But the paleoclimate record also reveals that the current climatic warming is occurring much more rapidly than past warming events.
As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming.
Temperature histories from paleoclimate data (green line) compared to the history based on modern instruments (blue line) suggest that global temperature is warmer now than it has been in the past 1,000 years, and possibly longer. (Graph adapted from Mann et al., 2008. )
Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual.
Is Current Warming Natural?
In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural causes not related to human activity. Most often, global climate has changed because of variations in sunlight. Tiny wobbles in Earth’s orbit altered when and where sunlight falls on Earth’s surface. Variations in the Sun itself have alternately increased and decreased the amount of solar energy reaching Earth. Volcanic eruptions have generated particles that reflect sunlight, brightening the planet and cooling the climate. Volcanic activity has also, in the deep past, increased greenhouse gases over millions of years, contributing to episodes of global warming.
A biographical sketch of Milutin Milankovitch describes how changes in Earth’s orbit affects its climate.
These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades. We know this because scientists closely monitor the natural and human activities that influence climate with a fleet of satellites and surface instruments.
Remote meteorological stations (left) and orbiting satellites (right) help scientists monitor the causes and effects of global warming. [Images courtesy NOAA Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (left) and Environmental Visualization Laboratory (right).]
NASA satellites record a host of vital signs including atmospheric aerosols (particles from both natural sources and human activities, such as factories, fires, deserts, and erupting volcanoes), atmospheric gases (including greenhouse gases), energy radiated from Earth’s surface and the Sun, ocean surface temperature changes, global sea level, the extent of ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice, plant growth, rainfall, cloud structure, and more.
On the ground, many agencies and nations support networks of weather and climate-monitoring stations that maintain temperature, rainfall, and snow depth records, and buoys that measure surface water and deep ocean temperatures. Taken together, these measurements provide an ever-improving record of both natural events and human activity for the past 150 years.
Scientists integrate these measurements into climate models to recreate temperatures recorded over the past 150 years. Climate model simulations that consider only natural solar variability and volcanic aerosols since 1750—omitting observed increases in greenhouse gases—are able to fit the observations of global temperatures only up until about 1950. After that point, the decadal trend in global surface warming cannot be explained without including the contribution of the greenhouse gases added by humans.
Though people have had the largest impact on our climate since 1950, natural changes to Earth’s climate have also occurred in recent times. For example, two major volcanic eruptions, El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991, pumped sulfur dioxide gas high into the atmosphere. The gas was converted into tiny particles that lingered for more than a year, reflecting sunlight and shading Earth’s surface. Temperatures across the globe dipped for two to three years.
Although Earth’s temperature fluctuates naturally, human influence on climate has eclipsed the magnitude of natural temperature changes over the past 120 years. Natural influences on temperature—El Niño, solar variability, and volcanic aerosols—have varied approximately plus and minus 0.2° C (0.4° F), (averaging to about zero), while human influences have contributed roughly 0.8° C (1° F) of warming since 1889. (Graphs adapted from Lean et al., 2008.)
Although volcanoes are active around the world, and continue to emit carbon dioxide as they did in the past, the amount of carbon dioxide they release is extremely small compared to human emissions. On average, volcanoes emit between 130 and 230 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. By burning fossil fuels, people release in excess of 100 times more, about 26 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere every year (as of 2005). As a result, human activity overshadows any contribution volcanoes may have made to recent global warming.
Changes in the brightness of the Sun can influence the climate from decade to decade, but an increase in solar output falls short as an explanation for recent warming. NASA satellites have been measuring the Sun’s output since 1978. The total energy the Sun radiates varies over an 11-year cycle. During solar maxima, solar energy is approximately 0.1 percent higher on average than it is during solar minima.
The transparent halo known as the solar corona changes between solar maximum (left) and solar minimum (right). (NASA Extreme Ultraviolet Telescope images from the SOHO Data Archive. )
Each cycle exhibits subtle differences in intensity and duration. As of early 2010, the solar brightness since 2005 has been slightly lower, not higher, than it was during the previous 11-year minimum in solar activity, which occurred in the late 1990s. This implies that the Sun’s impact between 2005 and 2010 might have been to slightly decrease the warming that greenhouse emissions alone would have caused.
Satellite measurements of daily (light line) and monthly average (dark line) total solar irradiance since 1979 have not detected a clear long-term trend. (NASA graph by Robert Simmon, based on data from the ACRIM Science Team. )
Scientists theorize that there may be a multi-decadal trend in solar output, though if one exists, it has not been observed as yet. Even if the Sun were getting brighter, however, the pattern of warming observed on Earth since 1950 does not match the type of warming the Sun alone would cause. When the Sun’s energy is at its peak (solar maxima), temperatures in both the lower atmosphere (troposphere) and the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) become warmer. Instead, observations show the pattern expected from greenhouse gas effects: Earth’s surface and troposphere have warmed, but the stratosphere has cooled.
Satellite measurements show warming in the troposphere (lower atmosphere, green line) but cooling in the stratosphere (upper atmosphere, red line). This vertical pattern is consistent with global warming due to increasing greenhouse gases, but inconsistent with warming from natural causes. (Graph by Robert Simmon, based on data from Remote Sensing Systems, sponsored by the NOAA Climate and Global Change Program.)
The stratosphere gets warmer during solar maxima because the ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet light; more ultraviolet light during solar maxima means warmer temperatures. Ozone depletion explains the biggest part of the cooling of the stratosphere over recent decades, but it can’t account for all of it. Increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the troposphere and stratosphere together contribute to cooling in the stratosphere.
To further explore the causes and effects of global warming and to predict future warming, scientists build climate models—computer simulations of the climate system. Climate models are designed to simulate the responses and interactions of the oceans and atmosphere, and to account for changes to the land surface, both natural and human-induced. They comply with fundamental laws of physics—conservation of energy, mass, and momentum—and account for dozens of factors that influence Earth’s climate.
Though the models are complicated, rigorous tests with real-world data hone them into powerful tools that allow scientists to explore our understanding of climate in ways not otherwise possible. By experimenting with the models—removing greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of fossil fuels or changing the intensity of the Sun to see how each influences the climate—scientists use the models to better understand Earth’s current climate and to predict future climate.
The models predict that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise, and Earth’s average surface temperature will rise with them. Based on a range of plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century.
Model simulations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate that Earth will warm between two and six degrees Celsius over the next century, depending on how fast carbon dioxide emissions grow. Scenarios that assume that people will burn more and more fossil fuel provide the estimates in the top end of the temperature range, while scenarios that assume that greenhouse gas emissions will grow slowly give lower temperature predictions. The orange line provides an estimate of global temperatures if greenhouse gases stayed at year 2000 levels. (©2007 IPCC WG1 AR-4.)
Climate Feedbacks
Greenhouse gases are only part of the story when it comes to global warming. Changes to one part of the climate system can cause additional changes to the way the planet absorbs or reflects energy. These secondary changes are called climate feedbacks, and they could more than double the amount of warming caused by carbon dioxide alone. The primary feedbacks are due to snow and ice, water vapor, clouds, and the carbon cycle.
Snow and ice
Perhaps the most well known feedback comes from melting snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Warming temperatures are already melting a growing percentage of Arctic sea ice, exposing dark ocean water during the perpetual sunlight of summer. Snow cover on land is also dwindling in many areas. In the absence of snow and ice, these areas go from having bright, sunlight-reflecting surfaces that cool the planet to having dark, sunlight-absorbing surfaces that bring more energy into the Earth system and cause more warming.
Canada’s Athabasca Glacier has been shrinking by about 15 meters per year. In the past 125 years, the glacier has lost half its volume and has retreated more than 1.5 kilometers. As glaciers retreat, sea ice disappears, and snow melts earlier in the spring, the Earth absorbs more sunlight than it would if the reflective snow and ice remained. (Photograph ©2005 Hugh Saxby. )
Water Vapor
The largest feedback is water vapor. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas. In fact, because of its abundance in the atmosphere, water vapor causes about two-thirds of greenhouse warming, a key factor in keeping temperatures in the habitable range on Earth. But as temperatures warm, more water vapor evaporates from the surface into the atmosphere, where it can cause temperatures to climb further.
The question that scientists ask is, how much water vapor will be in the atmosphere in a warming world? The atmosphere currently has an average equilibrium or balance between water vapor concentration and temperature. As temperatures warm, the atmosphere becomes capable of containing more water vapor, and so water vapor concentrations go up to regain equilibrium. Will that trend hold as temperatures continue to warm?
The amount of water vapor that enters the atmosphere ultimately determines how much additional warming will occur due to the water vapor feedback. The atmosphere responds quickly to the water vapor feedback. So far, most of the atmosphere has maintained a near constant balance between temperature and water vapor concentration as temperatures have gone up in recent decades. If this trend continues, and many models say that it will, water vapor has the capacity to double the warming caused by carbon dioxide alone.
Closely related to the water vapor feedback is the cloud feedback. Clouds cause cooling by reflecting solar energy, but they also cause warming by absorbing infrared energy (like greenhouse gases) from the surface when they are over areas that are warmer than they are. In our current climate, clouds have a cooling effect overall, but that could change in a warmer environment.
Clouds can both cool the planet (by reflecting visible light from the sun) and warm the planet (by absorbing heat radiation emitted by the surface). On balance, clouds slightly cool the Earth. (NASA Astronaut Photograph STS31-E-9552 courtesy Johnson space Center Earth Observations Lab. )
If clouds become brighter, or the geographical extent of bright clouds expands, they will tend to cool Earth’s surface. Clouds can become brighter if more moisture converges in a particular region or if more fine particles (aerosols) enter the air. If fewer bright clouds form, it will contribute to warming from the cloud feedback.
See Ship Tracks South of Alaska to learn how aerosols can make clouds brighter.
Clouds, like greenhouse gases, also absorb and re-emit infrared energy. Low, warm clouds emit more energy than high, cold clouds. However, in many parts of the world, energy emitted by low clouds can be absorbed by the abundant water vapor above them. Further, low clouds often have nearly the same temperatures as the Earth’s surface, and so emit similar amounts of infrared energy. In a world without low clouds, the amount of emitted infrared energy escaping to space would not be too different from a world with low clouds.
Clouds emit thermal infrared (heat) radiation in proportion to their temperature, which is related to altitude. This image shows the Western Hemisphere in the thermal infrared. Warm ocean and land surface areas are white and light gray; cool, low-level clouds are medium gray; and cold, high-altitude clouds are dark gray and black. (NASA image courtesy GOES Project Science. )
High cold clouds, however, form in a part of the atmosphere where energy-absorbing water vapor is scarce. These clouds trap (absorb) energy coming from the lower atmosphere, and emit little energy to space because of their frigid temperatures. In a world with high clouds, a significant amount of energy that would otherwise escape to space is captured in the atmosphere. As a result, global temperatures are higher than in a world without high clouds.
If warmer temperatures result in a greater amount of high clouds, then less infrared energy will be emitted to space. In other words, more high clouds would enhance the greenhouse effect, reducing the Earth’s capability to cool and causing temperatures to warm.
See Clouds and Radiation for a more complete description.
Scientists aren’t entirely sure where and to what degree clouds will end up amplifying or moderating warming, but most climate models predict a slight overall positive feedback or amplification of warming due to a reduction in low cloud cover. A recent observational study found that fewer low, dense clouds formed over a region in the Pacific Ocean when temperatures warmed, suggesting a positive cloud feedback in this region as the models predicted. Such direct observational evidence is limited, however, and clouds remain the biggest source of uncertainty--apart from human choices to control greenhouse gases—in predicting how much the climate will change.
The Carbon Cycle
Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and warming temperatures are causing changes in the Earth’s natural carbon cycle that also can feedback on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. For now, primarily ocean water, and to some extent ecosystems on land, are taking up about half of our fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions. This behavior slows global warming by decreasing the rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide increase, but that trend may not continue. Warmer ocean waters will hold less dissolved carbon, leaving more in the atmosphere.
About half the carbon dioxide emitted into the air from burning fossil fuels dissolves in the ocean. This map shows the total amount of human-made carbon dioxide in ocean water from the surface to the sea floor. Blue areas have low amounts, while yellow regions are rich in anthropogenic carbon dioxide. High amounts occur where currents carry the carbon-dioxide-rich surface water into the ocean depths. (Map adapted from Sabine et al., 2004.)
See The Ocean’s Carbon Balance on the Earth Observatory.
On land, changes in the carbon cycle are more complicated. Under a warmer climate, soils, especially thawing Arctic tundra, could release trapped carbon dioxide or methane to the atmosphere. Increased fire frequency and insect infestations also release more carbon as trees burn or die and decay.
On the other hand, extra carbon dioxide can stimulate plant growth in some ecosystems, allowing these plants to take additional carbon out of the atmosphere. However, this effect may be reduced when plant growth is limited by water, nitrogen, and temperature. This effect may also diminish as carbon dioxide increases to levels that become saturating for photosynthesis. Because of these complications, it is not clear how much additional carbon dioxide plants can take out of the atmosphere and how long they could continue to do so.
The impact of climate change on the land carbon cycle is extremely complex, but on balance, land carbon sinks will become less efficient as plants reach saturation, where they can no longer take up additional carbon dioxide, and other limitations on growth occur, and as land starts to add more carbon to the atmosphere from warming soil, fires, and insect infestations. This will result in a faster increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and more rapid global warming. In some climate models, carbon cycle feedbacks from both land and ocean add more than a degree Celsius to global temperatures by 2100.
Emission Scenarios
Scientists predict the range of likely temperature increase by running many possible future scenarios through climate models. Although some of the uncertainty in climate forecasts comes from imperfect knowledge of climate feedbacks, the most significant source of uncertainty in these predictions is that scientists don’t know what choices people will make to control greenhouse gas emissions.
The higher estimates are made on the assumption that the entire world will continue using more and more fossil fuel per capita, a scenario scientists call “business-as-usual.” More modest estimates come from scenarios in which environmentally friendly technologies such as fuel cells, solar panels, and wind energy replace much of today’s fossil fuel combustion.
It takes decades to centuries for Earth to fully react to increases in greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, among other greenhouse gases, will remain in the atmosphere long after emissions are reduced, contributing to continuing warming. In addition, as Earth has warmed, much of the excess energy has gone into heating the upper layers of the ocean. Like a hot water bottle on a cold night, the heated ocean will continue warming the lower atmosphere well after greenhouse gases have stopped increasing.
These considerations mean that people won’t immediately see the impact of reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Even if greenhouse gas concentrations stabilized today, the planet would continue to warm by about 0.6°C over the next century because of greenhouses gases already in the atmosphere.
See Earth’s Big Heat Bucket, Correcting Ocean Cooling, and Climate Q&A: If we immediately stopped emitting greenhouse gases, would global warming stop? to learn more about the ocean heat and global warming.
How Will Global Warming Change Earth?
The impact of increased surface temperatures is significant in itself. But global warming will have additional, far-reaching effects on the planet. Warming modifies rainfall patterns, amplifies coastal erosion, lengthens the growing season in some regions, melts ice caps and glaciers, and alters the ranges of some infectious diseases. Some of these changes are already occurring.
Global warming will shift major climate patterns, possibly prolonging and intensifying the current drought in the U.S. Southwest. The white ring of bleached rock on the once-red cliffs that hold Lake Powell indicate the drop in water level over the past decade—the result of repeated winters with low snowfall. (Photograph ©2006 Tigresblanco. )
Changing Weather
For most places, global warming will result in more frequent hot days and fewer cool days, with the greatest warming occurring over land. Longer, more intense heat waves will become more common. Storms, floods, and droughts will generally be more severe as precipitation patterns change. Hurricanes may increase in intensity due to warmer ocean surface temperatures.
Apart from driving temperatures up, global warming is likely to cause bigger, more destructive storms, leading to an overall increase in precipitation. With some exceptions, the tropics will likely receive less rain (orange) as the planet warms, while the polar regions will receive more precipitation (green). White areas indicate that fewer than two-thirds of the climate models agreed on how precipitation will change. Stippled areas reveal where more than 90 percent of the models agreed. (©2007 IPCC WG1 AR-4.)
It is impossible to pin any single unusual weather event on global warming, but emerging evidence suggests that global warming is already influencing the weather. Heat waves, droughts, and intense rain events have increased in frequency during the last 50 years, and human-induced global warming more likely than not contributed to the trend.
Rising Sea Levels
The weather isn’t the only thing global warming will impact: rising sea levels will erode coasts and cause more frequent coastal flooding. Some island nations will disappear. The problem is serious because up to 10 percent of the world’s population lives in vulnerable areas less than 10 meters (about 30 feet) above sea level.
Between 1870 and 2000, the sea level increased by 1.7 millimeters per year on average, for a total sea level rise of 221 millimeters (0.7 feet or 8.7 inches). And the rate of sea level rise is accelerating. Since 1993, NASA satellites have shown that sea levels are rising more quickly, about 3 millimeters per year, for a total sea level rise of 48 millimeters (0.16 feet or 1.89 inches) between 1993 and 2009.
Sea levels crept up about 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) during the twentieth century. Sea levels are predicted to go up between 18 and 59 cm (7.1 and 23 inches) over the next century, though the increase could be greater if ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica melt more quickly than predicted. Higher sea levels will erode coastlines and cause more frequent flooding. (Graph ©2007 Robert Rohde. )
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that sea levels will rise between 0.18 and 0.59 meters (0.59 to 1.9 feet) by 2099 as warming sea water expands, and mountain and polar glaciers melt. These sea level change predictions may be underestimates, however, because they do not account for any increases in the rate at which the world’s major ice sheets are melting. As temperatures rise, ice will melt more quickly. Satellite measurements reveal that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are shedding about 125 billion tons of ice per year—enough to raise sea levels by 0.35 millimeters (0.01 inches) per year. If the melting accelerates, the increase in sea level could be significantly higher.
Impacting Ecosystems
More importantly, perhaps, global warming is already putting pressure on ecosystems, the plants and animals that co-exist in a particular climate zone, both on land and in the ocean. Warmer temperatures have already shifted the growing season in many parts of the globe. The growing season in parts of the Northern Hemisphere became two weeks longer in the second half of the 20th century. Spring is coming earlier in both hemispheres.
This change in the growing season affects the broader ecosystem. Migrating animals have to start seeking food sources earlier. The shift in seasons may already be causing the lifecycles of pollinators, like bees, to be out of synch with flowering plants and trees. This mismatch can limit the ability of both pollinators and plants to survive and reproduce, which would reduce food availability throughout the food chain.
See Buzzing About Climate Change to read more about how the lifecycle of bees is synched with flowering plants.
Warmer temperatures also extend the growing season. This means that plants need more water to keep growing throughout the season or they will dry out, increasing the risk of failed crops and wildfires. Once the growing season ends, shorter, milder winters fail to kill dormant insects, increasing the risk of large, damaging infestations in subsequent seasons.
In some ecosystems, maximum daily temperatures might climb beyond the tolerance of indigenous plant or animal. To survive the extreme temperatures, both marine and land-based plants and animals have started to migrate towards the poles. Those species, and in some cases, entire ecosystems, that cannot quickly migrate or adapt, face extinction. The IPCC estimates that 20-30 percent of plant and animal species will be at risk of extinction if temperatures climb more than 1.5° to 2.5°C.
Impacting People
The changes to weather and ecosystems will also affect people more directly. Hardest hit will be those living in low-lying coastal areas, and residents of poorer countries who do not have the resources to adapt to changes in temperature extremes and water resources. As tropical temperature zones expand, the reach of some infectious diseases, such as malaria, will change. More intense rains and hurricanes and rising sea levels will lead to more severe flooding and potential loss of property and life.
One inevitable consequence of global warming is sea-level rise. In the face of higher sea levels and more intense storms, coastal communities face greater risk of rapid beach erosion from destructive storms like the intense nor’easter of April 2007 that caused this damage. (Photograph ©2007 metimbers2000. )
Hotter summers and more frequent fires will lead to more cases of heat stroke and deaths, and to higher levels of near-surface ozone and smoke, which would cause more ‘code red’ air quality days. Intense droughts can lead to an increase in malnutrition. On a longer time scale, fresh water will become scarcer, especially during the summer, as mountain glaciers disappear, particularly in Asia and parts of North America.
On the flip side, there could be “winners” in a few places. For example, as long as the rise in global average temperature stays below 3 degrees Celsius, some models predict that global food production could increase because of the longer growing season at mid- to high-latitudes, provided adequate water resources are available. The same small change in temperature, however, would reduce food production at lower latitudes, where many countries already face food shortages. On balance, most research suggests that the negative impacts of a changing climate far outweigh the positive impacts. Current civilization—agriculture and population distribution—has developed based on the current climate. The more the climate changes, and the more rapidly it changes, the greater the cost of adaptation.
Ultimately, global warming will impact life on Earth in many ways, but the extent of the change is largely up to us. Scientists have shown that human emissions of greenhouse gases are pushing global temperatures up, and many aspects of climate are responding to the warming in the way that scientists predicted they would. This offers hope. Since people are causing global warming, people can mitigate global warming, if they act in time. Greenhouse gases are long-lived, so the planet will continue to warm and changes will continue to happen far into the future, but the degree to which global warming changes life on Earth depends on our decisions now.
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CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The planet is warming, from North Pole to South Pole. Since 1906, the global average surface temperature has increased by more than 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius)— even more in sensitive polar regions. And the impacts of rising temperatures aren’t waiting for some far-flung future–the effects of global warming are appearing right now. The heat is melting glaciers and sea ice , shifting precipitation patterns , and setting animals on the move.
Many people think of global warming and climate change as synonyms, but scientists prefer to use “climate change” when describing the complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems. Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas , and a range of other impacts. All of these changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Scientists already have documented these impacts of climate change:
- Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice. In Montana's Glacier National Park the number of glaciers has declined to fewer than 30 from more than 150 in 1910.
- Much of this melting ice contributes to sea-level rise . Global sea levels are rising 0.13 inches (3.2 millimeters) a year . The rise is occurring at a faster rate in recent years and is predicted to accelerate in the coming decades.
- Rising temperatures are affecting wildlife and their habitats. Vanishing ice has challenged species such as the Adélie penguin in Antarctica , where some populations on the western peninsula have collapsed by 90 percent or more.
- As temperatures change, many species are on the move . Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have migrated farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
- Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average. Yet some regions are experiencing more severe drought , increasing the risk of wildfires, lost crops, and drinking water shortages .
- Some species—including mosquitoes , ticks , jellyfish , and crop pests—are thriving. Booming populations of bark beetles that feed on spruce and pine trees, for example, have devastated millions of forested acres in the U.S.
An iceberg melts in the waters off Antarctica. Climate change has accelerated the rate of ice loss across the continent.
Other effects could take place later this century, if warming continues. These include:
- Sea levels are expected to rise between 10 and 32 inches (26 and 82 centimeters) or higher by the end of the century.
- Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger. Floods and droughts will become more common. Large parts of the U.S., for example, face a higher risk of decades-long " megadroughts " by 2100.
- Less freshwater will be available, since glaciers store about three-quarters of the world's freshwater .
- Some diseases will spread, such as mosquito-borne malaria (and the 2016 resurgence of the Zika virus ).
- Ecosystems will continue to change: Some species will move farther north or become more successful; others, such as polar bears , won’t be able to adapt and could become extinct.
Read next: Is Global Warming Real?
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What are the effects of global warming?
The effects of global warming will be far-reaching and often devastating, scientists have warned.
- Temperature extremes
- Extreme weather
Sea levels and ocean acidification
Plants and animals, social effects.
- Further reading
Additional resources
Bibliography.
The effects of global warming can be seen and felt across the planet. Global warming , the gradual heating of Earth's surface, oceans and atmosphere, is caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels that pump carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Already, the consequences of global warming are measurable and visible.
"We can observe this happening in real time in many places," Josef Werne, a professor of geology and environmental science at the University of Pittsburgh, told Live Science. "Ice is melting in both polar ice caps and mountain glaciers. Lakes around the world, including Lake Superior, are warming rapidly — in some cases faster than the surrounding environment. Animals are changing migration patterns and plants are changing the dates of activity," such as trees budding their leaves earlier in the spring and dropping them later in the fall.
Here is an in-depth look at the ongoing effects of global warming.
Global warming increases average temperatures and temperature extremes
One of the most immediate and obvious consequences of global warming is the increase in temperatures around the world. The average global temperature has increased by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius) over the past 100 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Since record keeping began in 1895, the hottest year on record worldwide was 2016, according to NOAA and NASA data (opens in new tab) . That year Earth's surface temperature was 1.78 degrees F (0.99 degrees C) warmer than the average across the entire 20th century. Before 2016, 2015 was the warmest year on record, globally. And before 2015? Yep, 2014. In fact, all 10 of the warmest years on record have occurred since 2005, which tied with 2013 as the 10th-warmest year on record, according to NOAA’s Global Climate Report 2021 (opens in new tab) . Rounding out the top 6 hottest years on record across the globe are (in order of hottest to not as hot): 2020, 2019, 2015, 2017 and 2021.
For the contiguous United States and Alaska, 2016 was the second-warmest year on record and the 20th consecutive year that the annual average surface temperature exceeded the 122-year average since record keeping began, according to NOAA . Shattered heat records in the U.S. are increasingly becoming the norm: June 2021, for example, saw the warmest temperatures on record for that month for 15.2%of the contiguous U.S. That's the largest extent of record warm temperatures ever recorded in the country, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information (opens in new tab) .
Global warming increases extreme weather events
As global average temperatures warm, weather patterns are changing. An immediate consequence of global warming is extreme weather.
These extremes come in a lot of different flavors. Paradoxically, one effect of climate change can be colder-than-normal winters in some areas.
Changes in climate can cause the polar jet stream — the boundary between the cold North Pole air and the warm equatorial air — to migrate south, bringing with it cold, Arctic air. This is why some states can have a sudden cold snap or colder-than-normal winter, even during the long-term trend of global warming, Werne explained.
Werne received his doctorate in Geological Sciences at Northwestern University in 2000 with an emphasis in Biogeochemistry. He was a postdoctoral research scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research from 2000 to 2002 and on the faculty of the Large Lakes Observatory and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (assistant/associate professor) at the University of Minnesota Duluth, before joining the department in 2012. Werne spent a year in Perth, Australia, as a visiting senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the University of Western Australia, as well as a visiting scientist in the Western Australia Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre at Curtin University.
"Climate is, by definition, the long-term average of weather, over many years. One cold (or warm) year or season has little to do with overall climate. It is when those cold (or warm) years become more and more regular that we start to recognize it as a change in climate rather than simply an anomalous year of weather," he said. Global warming is also changing other extreme weather. According to the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of NOAA (opens in new tab) , hurricanes are likely to become more intense, on average, in a warming world. Most computer models suggest that hurricane frequency will stay about the same (or even decrease), but those storms that do form will have the capacity to drop more rain due to the fact that warmer air holds more moisture.
"And even if they become less frequent globally, hurricanes could still become more frequent in some particular areas," said atmospheric scientist Adam Sobel, author of " Storm Surge: Hurricane Sandy, Our Changing Climate, and Extreme Weather of the Past and Future (opens in new tab) " (HarperWave, 2014). "Additionally, scientists are confident that hurricanes will become more intense due to climate change." This is because hurricanes get their energy from the temperature difference between the warm tropical ocean and the cold upper atmosphere. Global warming increases that temperature difference. "Since the most damage by far comes from the most intense hurricanes — such as typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 — this means that hurricanes could become overall more destructive," said Sobel, a Columbia University professor in the departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics. (Hurricanes are called typhoons in the western North Pacific, and they're called cyclones in the South Pacific and Indian oceans.) What's more, hurricanes of the future will be hitting shorelines that are already prone to flooding due to the sea-level rise caused by climate change. This means that any given storm will likely cause more damage than it would have in a world without global warming.
Lightning is another weather feature that is being affected by global warming. According to a 2014 study (opens in new tab) , a 50% increase in the number of lightning strikes within the United States is expected by 2100 if global temperatures continue to rise. The researchers of the study found a 12% increase in lightning activity for every 1.8 degree F (1 degree C) of warming in the atmosphere. NOAA established the U.S. Climate Extremes Index (opens in new tab) (CEI) in 1996 to track extreme weather events. The number of extreme weather events that are among the most unusual in the historical record, according to the CEI, has been rising over the last four decades. Scientists project that extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts , blizzards and rainstorms will continue to occur more often and with greater intensity due to global warming, according to Climate Central (opens in new tab) . Climate models forecast that global warming will cause climate patterns worldwide to experience significant changes. These changes will likely include major shifts in wind patterns, annual precipitation and seasonal temperatures variations. These impacts vary by location and geography. For example, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (opens in new tab) , the eastern United States has been trending wetter over time, while the West – and particularly the Southwest – have become increasingly dry. Because high levels of greenhouse gases are likely to remain in the atmosphere for many years, these changes are expected to last for several decades or longer, according to the EPA.
Global warming melts ice
One of the primary manifestations of climate change so far is melt. North America, Europe and Asia have all seen a trend toward less snow cover between 1960 and 2015, according to 2016 research published in the journal Current Climate Change Reports. (opens in new tab) According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, there is now 10% less permafrost (opens in new tab) , or permanently frozen ground, in the Northern Hemisphere than there was in the early 1900s. The thawing of permafrost can cause landslides and other sudden land collapses . It can also release long-buried microbes, as in a 2016 case when a cache of buried reindeer carcasses thawed and caused an outbreak of anthrax . One of the most dramatic effects of global warming is the reduction in Arctic sea ice. Sea ice hit record-low extents in both the fall and winter of 2015 and 2016, meaning that at the time when the ice is supposed to be at its peak, it was lagging. The melt means there is less thick sea ice that persists for multiple years. That means less heat is reflected back into the atmosphere by the shiny surface of the ice and more is absorbed by the comparatively darker ocean, creating a feedback loop that causes even more melt, according to NASA's Operation IceBridge (opens in new tab) . Glacial retreat, too, is an obvious effect of global warming. Only 25 glaciers bigger than 25 acres are now found in Montana's Glacier National Park, where about 150 glaciers were once found, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A similar trend is seen in glacial areas worldwide. According to a 2016 study in the journal Nature Geoscience, there is a 99% likelihood that this rapid retreat is due to human-caused climate change. Some glaciers retreated up to 15 times as much as they would have without global warming, those researchers found.
In general, as ice melts, sea levels rise. According to a 2021 report by the World Meteorological Organization (opens in new tab) , the pace of sea level rise doubled from 0.08 inches (2.1 millimeters) per year between 1993 and 2002 to 0.17 inches (4.4 mm) per year between 2013 and 2021.
Melting polar ice in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, coupled with melting ice sheets and glaciers across Greenland, North America, South America, Europe and Asia, are expected to raise sea levels significantly. Global sea levels have risen about 8 inches since 1870, according to the EPA, and the rate of increase is expected to accelerate in the coming years. If current trends continue, many coastal areas, where roughly half of the Earth's human population lives, will be inundated.
Researchers project that by 2100, average sea levels will be 2.3 feet (.7 meters) higher in New York City, 2.9 feet (0.88 m) higher at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and 3.5 feet (1.06 m) higher at Galveston, Texas, the EPA reports. According to an IPCC report (opens in new tab) , if greenhouse gas emissions remain unchecked, global sea levels could rise by as much as 3 feet (0.9 meters) by 2100. That estimate is an increase from the estimated 0.9 to 2.7 feet (0.3 to 0.8 meters) that was predicted in the 2007 IPCC report for future sea-level rise.
Sea level isn't the only thing changing for the oceans due to global warming. As levels of CO2 increase, the oceans absorb some of that gas, which increases the acidity of seawater. Werne explains it this way: "When you dissolved CO2 in water, you get carbonic acid. This is the same exact thing that happens in cans of soda. When you pop the top on a can of Dr Pepper, the pH is 2 — quite acidic."
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the early 1700s, the acidity of the oceans has increased about 25 percent, according to the EPA. "This is a problem in the oceans, in large part, because many marine organisms make shells out of calcium carbonate (think corals, oysters), and their shells dissolve in acid solution," said Werne. "So as we add more and more CO2 to the ocean, it gets more and more acidic, dissolving more and more shells of sea creatures. It goes without saying that this is not good for their health."
If current ocean acidification trends continue, coral reefs are expected to become increasingly rare in areas where they are now common, including most U.S. waters, the EPA reports. In 2016 and 2017, portions of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia were hit with bleaching , a phenomenon in which coral eject their symbiotic algae. Bleaching is a sign of stress from too-warm waters, unbalanced pH or pollution; coral can recover from bleaching, but back-to-back episodes make recovery less likely.
The effects of global warming on Earth's ecosystems are expected to be significant and widespread. Many species of plants and animals are already moving their range northward or to higher altitudes as a result of warming temperatures, according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences.
"They are not just moving north, they are moving from the equator toward the poles. They are quite simply following the range of comfortable temperatures, which is migrating to the poles as the global average temperature warms," Werne said. Ultimately, he said, this becomes a problem when the rate of climate change velocity (how fast a region changes put into a spatial term) is faster than the rate that many organisms can migrate. Because of this, many animals may not be able to compete in the new climate regime and may go extinct.
Additionally, migratory birds and insects are now arriving in their summer feeding and nesting grounds several days or weeks earlier than they did in the 20th century, according to the EPA.
Warmer temperatures will also expand the range of many disease-causing pathogens that were once confined to tropical and subtropical areas, killing off plant and animal species that formerly were protected from disease.
In addition, animals that live in the polar regions are facing an existential threat. In the Arctic, the decline in sea ice and changes in ice melt threaten particularly ice-dependent species, such as narwhals ( Monodon monoceros ), polar bears ( Ursus maritimus ) and walruses ( Odobenus rosmarus ), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) (opens in new tab) noted. Animals in the Antarctic also face serious challenges — in Oct. 2022 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) as endangered due to the threat of climate change.
A 2020 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (opens in new tab) suggested that 1 in every 3 species of plant and animal are at risk of extinction by 2070 due to climate change.
As dramatic as the effects of climate change are expected to be on the natural world, the projected changes to human society may be even more devastating.
Agricultural systems will likely be dealt a crippling blow. Though growing seasons in some areas will expand, the combined impacts of drought, severe weather, lack of accumulated snowmelt, greater number and diversity of pests, lower groundwater tables and a loss of arable land could cause severe crop failures and livestock shortages worldwide.
North Carolina State University (opens in new tab) also notes that carbon dioxide is affecting plant growth. Though CO2 can increase the growth of plants, the plants may become less nutritious.
This loss of food security may, in turn, create havoc in international food markets and could spark famines, food riots, political instability and civil unrest worldwide, according to a number of analyses from sources as diverse as the U.S Department of Defense, the Center for American Progress and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
In addition to less nutritious food, the effect of global warming on human health is also expected to be serious. The American Medical Association has reported an increase in mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever, as well as a rise in cases of chronic conditions like asthma, most likely as a direct result of global warming. The 2016 outbreak of Zika virus , a mosquito-borne illness, highlighted the dangers of climate change. The disease causes devastating birth defects in fetuses when pregnant women are infected, and climate change could make higher-latitude areas habitable for the mosquitoes that spread the disease, experts said. Longer, hotter summers could also lead to the spread of tick-borne illnesses .
Further reading on the impacts of global warming
Many governments and agencies keep up-to-date information on climate change research and statistics online. The most comprehensive and in-depth global reports are produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which released its Sixth Assessment Report (opens in new tab) on the science of climate change in 2021.
— 8 ominous climate milestones reached in 2021
— Ignoring climate change will lead to 'untold suffering,' scientist panel warns
— Earth's lower atmosphere is expanding due to climate change
For a historical look at the effects of climate change on Earth (and how modern warming compares), read Peter Brannen's " The Ends of the Earth: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions (opens in new tab) " (Ecco, 2017).
For more on the potential impacts of climate change in urban environments, the freely available book chapter Climate Change and its Impacts in the book " Climate Change Resilience in the Urban Environment " (IOP Publishing, 2017) covers the challenges that lay ahead for human populations.
Finally, for a psychological deep-dive on why all of this bad news is hard to take in, try " Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change (opens in new tab) " (Bloomsbury USA, 2015) by climate activist and communicator George Marshall.
- This NASA page (opens in new tab) includes a series of visualizations that illustrate how some of Earth's key climate indicators — sea ice, sea level, global temperature and carbon dioxide — are changing over time.
- This NOAA sea-level rise learning module (opens in new tab) includes educational videos, background for teachers, learning objectives and more.
- ClimateBrief has gathered (opens in new tab) 10 of the best climate change videos on YouTube.
- EPA: Climate Change: Basic Information (opens in new tab)
- NASA: Global Climate Change (opens in new tab)
- NOAA: Climate News and Data (opens in new tab)
Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior. She was previously a senior writer for Live Science but is now a freelancer based in Denver, Colorado, and regularly contributes to Scientific American and The Monitor, the monthly magazine of the American Psychological Association. Stephanie received a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina and a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Global Warming and Politics
The existing information that we have on global warming and climate change offers little guidance on the amount of damage the globe is suffering. The increase of internal global temperature has been over thousands of years, however, it has been increasing lately. Since the Industrial revolution around the 1760s, the amount of carbon dioxide and other kinds of gasses damaged the ozone cap and increase the greenhouse effect making the world hotter. And increasing climate change with it. The elected head of our country was not a perfect example a couple of years back o on how to treat this cause, but it has gotten better over the few months. There are many ways that we can stop this effect on the world before it gets to 1.5 degrees over the global’s normal temperature.
The meteor that will extinguish the human race is one that we have predicted from years ago. We know how to stop it, but we do nothing about it. It’s called Global Warming.
In a NASA article called “The Causes of Climate” change that was published when NASA started studying climate change around 1980. It argues the way global warming started, causes, and effects between other topics. The purpose of this article is to inform regular people about the causes and effects of global warming, what we have done to stop it and what we can still do to reduce this temperature. This paper adopts a formal and assertive tone to make it strong and understandable for most of the population to understand and interact with. “Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20 th century to the human expansion of the “greenhouse effect” 1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.” (Page #1 Sentences 1-3). This explains why the temperature is increasing, that is the greenhouse effect. Gasses get caught in the ozone layer and make some light get into the globe and some do not let the light leave.
The authors Yangyang Xu, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, and David G. Victor. In their article called “Global Warming Will Happen Faster Than We Think” which was published in December 2018 addresses the topic of the increase of global temperature at an amazing and worrying speed and argues future predictions on how much time will it take to kill the human race outrunning our adaptation abilities. The purpose of these incredible authors is to make reasoning into the people and get into their feelings. They predicted the amount of temperature that will be around the world in 10 years, 20 years which is incredibly fast. Their children will suffer the consequences of our actions and their children’s children. They adopt a more aggressive tone to mess with people’s heads and turn them against this very dangerous topic.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5
Here is an image showing the amount of temperature that the globe will be above its normal level in the next couple of years. Even with some variation, there is a critical and deadly increase expected that will kill every live spice in the world, slowly.
The paper “Climate policy: Ditch the 2 °C warming goal” published in 2014 by two professors of the University of California demonstrates how global warming affects climate change. The number of greenhouse effects also has a big impact on the difference in climate change. “A single index of climate-change risk would be wonderful. Such a thing, however, cannot exist. Instead, a set of indicators is needed to gauge the varied stresses that humans are placing on the climate system and their possible impacts. Doctors call their basket of health indices vital signs. The same approach is needed for the climate”(page 2, sentences 67-71). This explains what humans are doing to increase the randomness and dangerousness of climate change. It also comments how the sea reflects a lot on global warming. “The oceans are taking up 93% of the extra energy being added to the climate system, which is stoking sea-level rise and other climate impacts”
https://www.nature.com/articles/514030a
“The Real Clime Debate” This Paper has a very straightforward and informative tone, by responding to questions that the general public has and can easily understand. It was published in October 2017 by Peter Agre, Mario Molina , and Steven Chu, persons with different occupations but with the same goal. What does politics have to do with climate change and global warming? They think that scientists should make a big part of politics. Even though some scientists have been in the government, there should be a little more and with bigger influence within the public, they think that with this, the public will have a bigger impact and take this situation more seriously.
Talking about politics, we have “President Trump announced on Thursday that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, weakening efforts to combat global warming and embracing isolationist voices in his White House who argued that the agreement was a pernicious threat to the economy and American sovereignty” (Publish by the New York Times newspaper in June 2017). This paragraph illustrates that President Trump did not care about global warming and climate change. He tried to get the United States out of the Paris climate accord. “At what point does America get demeaned? At what point do they start laughing at us as a country?” Mr. Trump said. “We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore. And they won’t be.” These are words that The president said. He thought that the other countries were laughing at him and his country for trying to stop global warming. His mind was just on his country and even though it sounds selfish, he was just taking care of the job he was assigned to. This is a good example of a lack of information about this topic and that scientists need to do a better job at informing the general public.
In conclusion, global warming is a major challenge for our current global society. There is no doubt that global warming will change our lives in the next couple of decades. The question is if we are going to be able to decrease its speed and be able to adapt to these new changes or if it will outspeed us and kill the whole human race. Every single person in this world should be making this stop, either by doing something to the environment like taking a bike instead of your car or voting each time so you know at least you are voting for a person that has knowledge about this and has the initiative to stop it.
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- Global Warming
Global Warming Essay
So You Want To Write A Global Warming Essay?
One of the most important issues of our time is climate change, or global warming. As a student, you should know that climate change is real and that the only political issue is what to do about it. Climate change is not something you can believe in, any more than gravity is something you can believe in. However, it can be difficult to propose solutions to the problem that are realistic and workable.
Climate change is complex but can be explained in simple terms even by those with no scientific background. Basically, climate change caused by the greenhouse effect, which means exactly what it says: the earth is like a giant greenhouse in which the heat can get trapped beneath the atmosphere. The atmosphere traps heat that emits from the surface of the planet. That heat would normally be allowed to move into space, but due to the proliferation of “greenhouse gases,” the atmosphere is becoming less permeable.
Writing the Essay
When you have been asked to write about global warming , you may be overwhelmed. There are many approaches to this complex subject. You could write about it for a science class, or for a political science class. You could talk about the causes or global warming, or the effects of global warming, or both. In fact, you could even write only about your suggestions for how to deal with the effects of global warming.
Looking for a creative or unique approach to global warming that will impress your readers? Want to write about global warming in a way that will interest you? This article will help you understand how to write an essay about global warming from many different perspectives.
- The different effects of global warming in two different geographic regions.
- Possible social or humanitarian effects from global warming, such as population migration.
- The places on Earth most at risk due to rising sea levels.
- The most reasonable policy solutions to address climate change.
- The countries that are doing the most to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- Some of the most effective global warming policies
- The history of global warming.
- Not Yet Worried About Global Warming? You Should Be
- Why Global Warming Is a Political Issue
- Will Global Warming Bring The World Together For a Common Cause?
- The Possible Effects of Global Warming
- Global Warming: Policy Suggestions
- Why Some People Think Global Warming is a Hoax
- Global Warming: Worst Case Scenarios
Getting Started
Before you begin your essay, consider things like how long it has to be and what class you are writing for. Then, narrow down your topic using one of the suggested subjects above or one of your own ideas. The next step would be to create a subject outline to help you structure your essay. With a subject like global warming, you are generally going to talk about causes, effects, and possible solutions to the problem.
I. Introduction
A. One degree in temperature change may not seem like a lot, but that amount of global warming can cause major crises, displacing millions of people and causing billions of dollars in damage.
B. It is a known fact that fossil fuel burning, particularly coal, is the biggest culprit of global warming (MacMillan, 2016).
C. Knowing what causes global warming makes it possible to take action, to minimize the deleterious effects of global warming.
D. Thesis Statement: A comprehensive solution to global warming would be to curtail carbon emissions further through innovations in alternative energy, combined with a plan to minimize humanitarian and financial damages.
II. Body Section One: Causes of Global Warming
A. Topic sentence: Global warming is anthropogenic, meaning that it is caused by human beings.
B. Human industrial activity results in the emission of greenhouse gases, with China and the United States the biggest culprits (MacMillan, 2016).
C. Knowing the causes of global warming, it becomes easier to come up with targeted and reasonable solutions to the problem.
III. Body Section Two: Effects of Global Warming
A. Topic sentence: Global warming is a problem because it can lead to extreme weather conditions, flooding due to rising sea levels, and resulting deaths, destruction, and displacement.
B. The term “global warming” is misleading, because not all areas will experience uniform temperature rises and some areas will not warm at all (NASA, 2018).
C. However, global warming has the potential to radically alter the climate conditions around the world.
1. Effects on agricultural production and food security.
2. Effects on water security.
3. Effects on population displacement and financial damages due to natural disasters.
4. Humanitarian and political effects due to displacement, which could even lead to the outbreak of wars.
D. Because of how devastating the effects of global warming will be, taking action now is an ethical responsibility.
IV. Body Section Three: How to Prevent Global Warming
A. Topic Sentence: Taking action on global warming now requires a concerted coalition between the private and public sectors around the world.
B. Governments need to work together better to create stimulus packages for investment into alternative energy.
C. The private sector needs to become more environmentally responsible, requiring new anti-pollution laws if necessary.
D. Governments and the private sector also need to work together to build resilience and have strategies in place for mitigating disasters.
V. Conclusion
A. Doing something about global warming requires being proactive, both in terms of changing the way industry operates, and also building resilience to minimize harm.
B. Innovation in new technologies will be essential to prevent global warming and stimulate the global economy.
C. Investment into infrastructure improvement will also help to minimize damages due to climate change.
D. Legislation and public policy, in addition to ethical behavior from the private sector, will help reduce climate change and create a safer tomorrow.
Introduction
Thesis statement.
A comprehensive solution to global warming would be to curtail carbon emissions further through innovations in alternative energy, combined with a plan to minimize humanitarian and financial damages.
One degree. That is all it takes to create massive changes on planet earth. Just one degree in temperature change may not seem like a lot, but that amount of global warming can cause major crises, displacing millions of people and causing billions of dollars in damage (NASA, 2018).
One degree. That is all it takes to create massive changes on planet earth. Just one degree in temperature change may not seem like a lot, but that amount of global warming can cause major crises, displacing millions of people and causing billions of dollars in damage (NASA, 2018). It is a known fact that fossil fuel burning, particularly coal, is the biggest culprit of global warming (MacMillan, 2016). Knowing what causes global warming makes it possible to take action, to minimize the deleterious effects of global warming. Global warming is not a political issue, but a simple fact. However, what to do about global warming is a political issue. A comprehensive solution to global warming would be to curtail carbon emissions further through innovations in alternative energy, combined with a plan to minimize humanitarian and financial damages.
Causes of Global Warming
Global warming is anthropogenic, meaning that its primary cause is human beings. In particular, human industrial activity results in the emission of greenhouse gases, with China and the United States the biggest culprits (MacMillan, 2016). The population of the planet has also exploded rapidly over the past century, which results in increased industry, increased use of land for agriculture, and increased human activities that contribute to global warming. The most important cause of global warming is greenhouse gases, which trap hot air in the Earth’s atmosphere instead of allowing that heat to escape into space. Greenhouse gasses build up in the earth’s atmosphere, effectively insulating the planet just as a greenhouse used to grow fruits and vegetables traps heat.
According to NASA (2018), the primary greenhouse gases responsible for global warming include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons. Deforestation leads to an overabundance of carbon dioxide, and agriculture leads to an overabundance of methane (NASA, 2018). Therefore, unsustainable agricultural practices and related issues like land use are one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gas buildup. Unsustainable agriculture is a major cause of global warming. There are several reasons why agriculture is a problem. One reason is linked to land use. When rainforests and other vegetation-dense areas are cut down to make room for agriculture, the result is an increase in carbon dioxide emissions (MacMillan, 2016). Many crops and farm animals are especially bad for the environment. For example, animals like cattle emit methane, a greenhouse gas, and certain fertilizers used extensively in mono-crop agriculture also lead to greenhouse gas emissions (NASA, 2018). Yet the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil for electricity production and transportation also cause global warming. Knowing the causes of global warming, it becomes easier to come up with targeted and reasonable solutions to the problem.
Effects of Global Warming
Global warming is a problem because it can lead to extreme weather conditions, flooding due to rising sea levels, and resulting deaths, destruction, and displacement. In fact, the term “global warming” is misleading, because not all areas will experience uniform temperature rises and some areas will not warm at all (NASA, 2018). However, global warming has the potential to radically alter the climate conditions around the world. The main effects of global warming will be on agricultural production and food security, on water security, on population displacement, financial damages due to natural disasters, and the humanitarian and possibly military effects of global warming.
Global warming will lead to changes to weather patterns, causing some areas to experience flooding and other areas to experience drought conditions (NASA, 2018). The result is that food production will be less reliable, and there could be major crop failures. Crop failures and unpredictable food supplies will drive up prices of food, leading to humanitarian crises, and possibly even cause famine in some of the most affected areas. In addition to alterations in food production, global warming will also lead to increased extreme weather events including major storms like hurricanes, and wildfires (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018). These extreme weather patterns can destroy whole communities, leading to humanitarian crises. The initial extreme weather may cause deaths, while the long-term effects include population displacement and refugee crises. Because of what it could mean for displacement and refugee crises, global warming could cause wars in the future. Because of how devastating the effects of global warming will be, taking action now is an ethical responsibility.
Rising temperatures cause ice packs to melt in the arctic and other glacial regions. The melting of ice is the primary contributor of sea level rises. Some ice packs will melt directly into the sea, altering the salinity of the sea water too, thereby having an impact on all underwater life. When inland glaciers melt, the additional water fills rivers, which could lead to disastrous flooding. Rising sea levels could inundate coastal regions and cause whole islands to disappear. Flooding due to global warming could displace countless people all around the world, creating humanitarian crises. As MacMillan (2016) also points out, flooding also increases the rates at which communicable diseases spread. Therefore, global warming could indirectly lead to disease proliferation.
It is also important to address the effects of global warming on the non-human populations of planet earth. Global warming has the potential to wipe out whole species. Whole ecosystems will change because of global warming, causing some animals and plants to move to new territories, altering the food chains and also changing the relationships between humans and nature.
Another important effect of global warming is related to national security. As the Union of Concerned Scientists (2018) points out, global warming may directly impact American military bases, particularly those located in coastal areas. In addition to the impact on military bases that are at risk for flooding, global warming could also create national security issues such as diverting military resources to helping the victims of climate change. If the United States experiences water shortages or crop failures due to global warming, it would also become more vulnerable and dependent on other nations, creating national security crises or alternatively, causing a bellicose president to invade another country for its resources.
How to Prevent Global Warming and Minimize Damage
Taking action on global warming now requires a concerted coalition between the private and public sectors around the world. Governments need to work together better to create stimulus packages for investment into alternative energy. Likewise, the private sector needs to become more environmentally responsible, requiring new anti-pollution laws if necessary. Governments and the private sector also need to work together to build resilience and have strategies in place for mitigating disasters. Unfortunately, getting multiple stakeholders to work together can be challenging, even within the same country. Creating international coalitions between governments and private sector organizations has been ineffective so far, but there is still room for hope.
As the Union of Concerned Scientists (2018) claims, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the first and most important order of business, and will require politicians to take action. The reason why politicians are often reluctant to take action is fear that doing so would adversely impact the economy. After all, many businesses have yet to develop alternative methods, processes, or technologies that can replace those that caused global warming. To overcome this problem, politicians need to simultaneously pass laws that offer incentives to companies for developing alternative technologies or energy sources. Another reason why governments need to take responsibility is that in most places, land use issues can be mitigated via legislation. Instead of allowing more deforestation, governments can cease new developments in favor of a more sustainable economic policy.
Taking action on global warming requires a multifaceted effort, that combines working with the private sector as well as forming local, regional, national, and international coalitions. Each region will experience global warming differently. Therefore, it is important to not just focus on what can be done nationally or internationally but also locally. Each community needs to build its own resilience strategy to reduce harm. For example, regions in California and the American West that could experience greater wildfires and droughts need to have in place improved fire mitigation strategies. Low-lying coastal regions like Florida and the Atlantic seaboard need to have evacuation or land reclamation measures in place in case of storms and rising sea levels. Local approaches help to create more robust long-term solutions. It is often easier to get smaller groups of people from the same region to agree on a course of action than it is for larger and more diverse entities. The residents of one area can see the immediate results of their work, and are more connected to the need to take action for their community.
Individual consumers also need to take responsibility for their choices to help reduce global warming. Because the private sector responds to consumers, and because governments respond to the private sector, ultimately consumers have more power than they may believe. By choosing sustainable products, and supporting sustainable, ethical companies, individuals can reduce global warming. Eating less meat or no meat is one way to contribute to the effort in reducing demand for unsustainable agricultural practices. Likewise, boycotting products that are manufactured in ways that contribute to global warming can also help create a consumer-driven revolution. Walking, riding a bicycle, and otherwise avoiding unnecessary use of fuel-burning cars is another way consumers can make a difference even before governments are willing to take action. As the Union of Concerned Scientists (2018) also points out, individuals have a responsibility to promote science literacy and reduce misinformation. When voters are empowered with information about global warming, they are more able and likely to elect officials who are dedicated to implementing solutions.
Minimizing damage is also an important global warming strategy. Both governments and the private sector need to work together to create more resilient communities. Disasters will happen, but responses need to be more robust. For example, the public infrastructure needs to be improved so that hurricanes like Katrina cause less damage than they did. Helping the most vulnerable areas around the world to prepare for disasters and evacuate people as safely and efficiently as possible is one of the most important ways of responding to the problem of global warming.
It may be impossible to completely eliminate global warming because of the huge population on the planet, but a lot can be done to minimize it and reduce harm. Doing something about global warming requires being proactive, both in terms of changing the way industry operates, and also building resilience to minimize the damages that may result from extreme weather, drought, and other problems. Innovation in new technologies will be essential to prevent global warming and stimulate the global economy. Investment into infrastructure improvement will also help to minimize damages due to climate change. Legislation and public policy, in addition to ethical behavior from the private sector, will help reduce climate change and create a safer tomorrow.
MacMillan, A. (2016). Global warming 101. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/global-warming-101#warming
NASA (2018). Facts. https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
Union of Concerned Scientists (2018). Confronting the realities of climate change. https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming#.WrwXPtPwYWo
When you write about global warming for a class, always remember to keep your audience in mind.
Are you writing your global warming essay for an environmental science class? If so, then make sure you use credible science sources and talk about the chemistry of greenhouse gases and other scientific principles.
However, if you are writing your essay for a debate class or for an English composition class, you will want to use the principles of argumentative essay or expository essay writing.
You might even be asked to write about global warming from a historical perspective, such as tracing the evolution of policies or attitudes towards global warming. Sociology, anthropology, and psychology classes might also ask you to write about attitudes towards global warming.
Remember to use an outline to stay organized while you write, and proofread your copy when you are finished writing your draft.
To avoid being accused of plagiarism when you write an essay, always keep track of what sources you use and cite them properly in the References or Bibliography section of your essay. If you need help composing an essay on global warming or any other subject, you can seek help with a writing tutor.
Read our research on: Congress | Economy | Gender
Regions & Countries
In response to climate change, citizens in advanced economies are willing to alter how they live and work, many doubt success of international efforts to reduce global warming.
This analysis focuses on attitudes toward global climate change around the world. For this report, we conducted nationally representative Pew Research Center surveys of 16,254 adults from March 12 to May 26, 2021, in 16 advanced economies. All surveys were conducted over the phone with adults in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.
In the United States, we surveyed 2,596 U.S. adults from Feb. 1 to 7, 2021. Everyone who took part in the U.S. survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.
This study was conducted in countries where nationally representative telephone surveys are feasible. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, face-to-face interviewing is not currently possible in many parts of the world.
Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses. See our methodology database for more information about the survey methods outside the U.S. For respondents in the U.S., read more about the ATP’s methodology .
A new Pew Research Center survey in 17 advanced economies spanning North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region finds widespread concern about the personal impact of global climate change. Most citizens say they are willing to change how they live and work at least some to combat the effects of global warming, but whether their efforts will make an impact is unclear.
Citizens offer mixed reviews of how their societies have responded to climate change, and many question the efficacy of international efforts to stave off a global environmental crisis.
Conducted this past spring, before the summer season ushered in new wildfires , droughts , floods and stronger-than-usual storms , the study reveals a growing sense of personal threat from climate change among many of the publics polled. In Germany, for instance, the share that is “very concerned” about the personal ramifications of global warming has increased 19 percentage points since 2015 (from 18% to 37%).
In the study, only Japan (-8 points) saw a significant decline in the share of citizens deeply concerned about climate change. In the United States, views did not change significantly since 2015.
Young adults, who have been at the forefront of some of the most prominent climate change protests in recent years, are more concerned than their older counterparts about the personal impact of a warming planet in many publics surveyed. The widest age gap is found in Sweden, where 65% of 18- to 29-year-olds are at least somewhat concerned about the personal impacts of climate change in their lifetime, compared with just 25% of those 65 and older. Sizable age differences are also found in New Zealand, Australia, the U.S., France and Canada.
Public concern about climate change appears alongside a willingness to reduce its effects by taking personal steps. Majorities in each of the advanced economies surveyed say they are willing to make at least some changes in how they live and work to address the threat posed by global warming. And across all 17 publics polled, a median of 34% are willing to consider “a lot of changes” to daily life as a response to climate change.
Generally, those on the left of the political spectrum are more open than those on the right to taking personal steps to help reduce the effects of climate change. This is particularly true in the U.S., where citizens who identify with the ideological left are more than twice as willing as those on the ideological right (94% vs. 45%) to modify how they live and work for this reason. Other countries where those on the left and right are divided over whether to alter their lives and work in response to global warming include Canada, the Netherlands, Australia and Germany.
Beyond individual actions, the study reveals mixed views on the broader, collective response to climate change. In 12 of the 17 publics polled, half or more think their own society has done a good job dealing with global climate change. But only in Singapore (32%), Sweden (14%), Germany (14%), New Zealand (14%) and the United Kingdom (13%) do more than one-in-ten describe such efforts as “very good.” Meanwhile, fewer than half in Japan (49%), Italy (48%), the U.S. (47%), South Korea (46%) and Taiwan (45%) give their society’s climate response favorable marks.
Abroad, the U.S. response to climate change is generally seen as wanting. Among the 16 other advanced economies surveyed, only Singaporeans are slightly positive in their assessment of American efforts (53% say the U.S. is doing a “good job” of addressing climate change). Elsewhere judgments are harsher, with six-in-ten or more across Australia, New Zealand and many of the European publics polled saying the U.S. is doing a “bad job” of dealing with global warming. However, China fares substantially worse in terms of international public opinion: A median of 78% across 17 publics describe China’s handling of climate change as “bad,” including 45% who describe the Chinese response as “very bad.” That compares with a cumulative median of 61% who judge the American response as “bad.”
At the cross-national level, the European Union’s response to climate change is viewed favorably by majorities in each of the advanced economies surveyed, except Germany where opinion is split (49% good job; 47% bad job). However, there is still room for improvement, as only a median of 7% across the publics polled describe the EU’s efforts as “very good.” The United Nations’ actions to address global warming are also generally seen in a favorable light: A median of 56% say the multilateral organization is doing a good job. But again, the reviews are tempered, with just 5% describing the UN’s response to climate change as “very good.”
Publics in the advanced economies surveyed are divided as to whether actions by the international community can successfully reduce the effects of global warming. Overall, a median of 52% lack confidence that a multilateral response will succeed, compared with 46% who remain optimistic that nations can respond to the impact of climate change by working together. Skepticism of multilateral efforts is most pronounced in France (65%), Sweden (61%) and Belgium (60%), while optimism is most robust in South Korea (68%) and Singapore (66%).
These are among the findings of a new Pew Research Center survey, conducted from Feb. 1 to May 26, 2021, among 18,850 adults in 17 advanced economies.
People concerned climate change will harm them during their lifetimes
Many people across 17 advanced economies are concerned that global climate change will harm them personally at some point in their lifetime. A median of 72% express at least some concern that they will be personally harmed by climate change in their lifetimes, compared with medians of 19% and 11% who say they are not too or not at all concerned, respectively. The share who say they are very concerned climate change will harm them personally ranges from 15% in Sweden to 57% in Greece.
Roughly two-thirds of Canadians and six-in-ten Americans are worried climate change will harm them in their lifetimes. Only 12% of Canadians and 17% of Americans are not at all concerned about the personal impact of global climate change.
Publics in Europe express various degrees of concern for potential harm caused by climate change. Three-quarters or more of those in Greece, Spain, Italy, France and Germany say they are concerned that climate change will harm them at some point during their lives. Only in Sweden does less than a majority of adults express concern about climate change harming them. Indeed, 56% of Swedes are not concerned about personal harm related to climate change.
In general, Asia-Pacific publics express more worry about climate change causing them personal harm than not. The shares who express concern range from 64% in Australia to 88% in South Korea. About one-third or more in South Korea, Singapore and Australia say they are very concerned climate change will harm them personally.
The share who are very concerned climate change will harm them personally at some point during their lives has increased significantly since 2015 in nearly every country where trend data is available. In Germany, for example, the share who say they are very concerned has increased 19 percentage points over the past six years. Double-digit changes are also present in the UK (+18 points), Australia (+16), South Korea (+13) and Spain (+10). The only public where concern for the harm from climate change has decreased significantly since 2015 is Japan (-8 points).
While many worry climate change will harm them personally in the future, there is widespread sentiment that climate change is already affecting the world around them. In Pew Research Center surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020, a median of 70% across 20 publics surveyed said climate change is affecting where they live a great deal or some amount. And majorities in most countries included as part of a 26-nation survey in 2018 thought global climate change was a major threat to their own country (the same was true across all 14 countries surveyed in 2020 ).
Those who place themselves on the left of the ideological spectrum are more likely than those who place themselves on the right to be concerned global climate change will harm them personally during their lifetime. This pattern is present across all 14 nations where ideology is measured. In 10 of these 14, though, majorities across the ideological left, center and right are concerned climate change will harm them personally.
The difference is starkest in the U.S.: Liberals are 59 percentage points more likely than conservatives to express concern for this possibility (87% vs. 28%, respectively). However, large ideological differences are also present in Australia (with liberals 41 points more likely to say this), the Netherlands (+35), Canada (+30), Sweden (+30) and New Zealand (+23).
Women are more concerned than men that climate change will harm them personally in many of the publics polled. In Germany, women are 13 points more likely than men to be concerned that climate change will cause them harm (82% vs 69%, respectively). Double-digit differences are also present across several publics, including the U.S., Sweden, the UK, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia and the Netherlands.
When this question was first asked in 2015 , women were also more likely to express concern than their male counterparts that climate change will harm them in the U.S., Germany, Canada, Japan, Spain and Australia.
Young people have been at the forefront of past protests seeking government action on climate change. In eight places surveyed, young adults ages 18 to 29 are more likely than those 65 and older to be concerned climate change will harm them during their lifetime. The difference is greatest in Sweden, home of youth climate activist Greta Thunberg . Young Swedes are 40 points more likely than their older counterparts to say they are concerned about harm from climate change. Large age gaps are also present in New Zealand (with younger adults 31 points more likely to say this), Australia (+30) and Singapore (+20). And young Americans, French, Canadians and Brits are also more likely to say that climate change will personally harm them in their lifetimes.
While large majorities across every age group in Greece and South Korea are concerned climate change will harm them personally, those ages 65 and older are more likely to hold this sentiment than those younger than 30.
Many across the world willing to change how they live and work to reduce effects of climate change
Many across the publics surveyed say they are willing to make at least some changes to the way they live and work to reduce the effects of climate change. A median of 80% across 17 publics say they would make at least some changes to their lives to reduce the effects of climate change, compared with a median of 19% who say they would make a few changes or no changes at all. The share willing to make a lot of changes ranges from 8% in Japan to 62% in Greece.
In North America, about three-quarters or more of both Canadians and Americans say they are willing to make changes to reduce the effects of climate change.
Large majorities across each of the European publics surveyed say they are willing to change personal behavior to address climate change, but the share who say they are willing to make a lot of changes varies considerably. About half or more in Greece, Italy and Spain say they would make a lot of changes, while fewer than a third in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands say the same.
Majorities in each of the Asia-Pacific publics polled say they would make some or a lot of changes to how they live and work to combat the effects of climate change, including more than three-quarters in South Korea, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. But in Japan, fully 44% say they are willing to make few or no changes to how they live and work to address climate change, the largest share of any public surveyed.
In eight countries surveyed, those ages 18 to 29 are more likely than those 65 and older to say they are willing to make at least some changes to how they live and work to help reduce the effects of climate change. In France, for example, about nine-in-ten of those younger than 30 are willing to make changes in response to climate change, compared with 62% of those 65 and older.
Ideologically, those on the left are more likely than those on the right to express willingness to change their behavior to help reduce the effects of global climate change. The ideological divide is widest in the U.S., where 94% of liberals say they are willing to make at least some changes to how they live and work to help reduce the effects of climate change, compared with 45% of conservatives. Large ideological differences are also present between those on the left and the right in Canada (a difference of 26 percentage points), the Netherlands (25 points), Australia (23 points) and Germany (22 points).
In most publics, those with more education are more likely than those with less education to say they are willing to adjust their lifestyles in response to the impact of climate change. 1 In Belgium, for example, those with a postsecondary degree or higher are 14 points more likely than those with a secondary education or below to say they are willing to make changes to the way they live. Double-digit differences are also present between those with more education and less education in France, Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Australia.
And in most places surveyed, those with a higher-than-median income are more likely than those with a lower income to express willingness to make at least some changes to reduce the effects of climate change. For example, in Belgium, about three-quarters (76%) of those with a higher income say they would make changes to their lives, compared with 66% of those with a lower income.
Many are generally positive about how their society is handling climate change
Respondents give mostly positive responses when asked to reflect on how their own society is handling climate change. Around half or more in most places say they their society is doing at least a somewhat good job, with a median of 56% saying this across the 17 advanced economies.
Roughly two-thirds (64%) of Canadians say their country is doing a good job, while nearly half of Americans say the same.
In most of the European publics surveyed, majorities believe their nation’s climate change response is at least somewhat good. Those in Sweden and the UK are especially optimistic, with around seven-in-ten saying their society is doing a good job dealing with climate change. In Europe, Italians are the most critical of their country’s performance: 20% say their society is doing a very bad job, the largest share among all publics surveyed.
Around eight-in-ten in Singapore and New Zealand say their publics are doing a good job – the highest levels among all societies surveyed. This includes around a third (32%) in Singapore who say they are doing a very good job. Adults in the other Asia-Pacific publics surveyed are more circumspect; about half or fewer say their society is doing a good job.
Political ideology plays a role in how people evaluate their own public’s handling of climate change. For adults in 10 countries, those on the right tend to rate their country’s performance with regard to climate change more positively. The difference is most stark in Australia: 69% of those on the right say Australia is handling climate change well, compared with just 19% of those on the left – a 50-point difference. A striking difference also appears in the U.S., where conservatives are 41 points more likely than liberals to say the U.S. is doing a good job dealing with climate change.
Evaluations are also tied to how people view governing parties. In 10 of 17 publics surveyed, people who see the governing party positively are more likely than those with a negative view of the party to think climate change is being handled well. The opposite is true in the U.S., where only 33% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say the U.S. is handling climate change well, compared with 61% of those who do not support the Democratic Party.
Mixed views on whether action by the international community can reduce the effects of climate change
Only a median of 46% across the publics polled are confident that actions taken by the international community will significantly reduce the effects of climate change. A median of 52% are not confident these actions will reduce the effects of climate change.
Canadians are generally divided on whether international climate action can reduce the impact of climate change. And 54% of Americans are not confident in the international community’s response to the climate crisis.
In Europe, majorities in Germany and the Netherlands express confidence that international climate action can significantly address climate change. However, majorities in France, Sweden, Belgium and Italy are not confident in climate actions taken by the international community.
South Koreans and Singaporeans say they are confident in international climate action, but elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, public opinion is either divided or leans toward pessimism about international efforts.
Opinion of international organizations, like the United Nations, is linked to confidence that actions taken by the international community will significantly reduce the effects of global climate change. Those with a favorable view of the UN are more confident that actions taken by the international community will significantly reduce the effects of climate change than those with an unfavorable view of the UN. This difference is largest in the U.S., where 61% with a favorable view of the UN say international action will reduce the effects of climate change, compared with just 22% of those with an unfavorable view of the organization. Double-digit differences are present in every public polled.
Similarly, in every EU member state included in the survey, those with favorable views of the bloc are more likely to have confidence in international efforts to combat climate change than those with unfavorable views.
Little consensus on whether international climate action will harm or benefit domestic economies
Relatively few in the advanced economies surveyed think actions taken by the international community to address climate change, such as the Paris climate agreement, will mostly benefit or harm their own economy. A median of 31% across 17 publics say these actions will be good for their economy, while a median of 24% believe such actions will mostly harm their economy. A median of 39% say actions like the Paris climate agreement will have no economic impact.
In Sweden, about half (51%) feel international climate actions will mostly benefit their economy. On the other hand, only 18% in France say their public will benefit economically from international climate agreements.
In no public do more than a third say international action on climate change will harm their economy. But in the U.S., which pulled out of the Paris climate agreement under former President Donald Trump and has just recently rejoined the accord under President Joe Biden, a third say international climate agreements will harm the economy. (For more on how international publics view Biden’s international policy actions, see “ America’s Image Abroad Rebounds With Transition From Trump to Biden .”)
The more widespread sentiment among those surveyed is that climate actions will have no impact on domestic economies. In eight publics, four-in-ten or more hold this opinion, including half in France. And in two places – Japan and Taiwan – one-in-five or more offer no opinion.
Those on the left of the ideological spectrum are more likely than those on the right to say international action to address climate change – such as the Paris Agreement – will mostly benefit their economies. U.S. respondents are particularly divided by ideology. Roughly half (53%) of liberals feel international actions related to climate change will benefit the U.S. economy, compared with just 12% of conservatives. The next largest difference is in Canada, where those on the left are 24 percentage points more likely than those on the right to think this type of international action will benefit their economy.
Those on the right in many publics are, in turn, more likely than those on the left to think international actions such as the Paris Agreement will mostly harm their economies. Here again, ideological divisions in the U.S. are much larger than those in other publics: 65% of conservatives say international climate change actions will harm the American economy, compared with 12% of liberals who say the same.
In several advanced economies, those who say their current economic situation is good are more likely to say that actions taken by the international community to address climate change will mostly benefit their economies than those who say the economic situation is bad. In Sweden, for example, a majority (55%) of those who say the current economic situation is good also believe international action like the Paris Agreement will benefit the Swedish economy, compared with 31% who are more negative about the state of the economy.
Evaluating the climate change response from the EU, UN, U.S. and China
In addition to reflecting on their own public, respondents were asked to evaluate how four international organizations or countries are handling global climate change. Of the entities asked about, the European Union receives the best ratings, with a median of 63% across the 17 publics surveyed saying the EU is doing a good job handling climate change. A median of 56% say the same for the United Nations. Far fewer believe the U.S. or China – the two leading nations in carbon dioxide emissions – are doing a good job.
EU handling of climate change receives high marks in and outside of Europe
Majorities in all but two of the publics surveyed think the EU is doing a good job addressing climate change. However, this positivity is tempered, with most respondents saying the EU’s effort is somewhat good, but few saying it is very good.
Praise for the bloc’s response to climate change is common among the European countries surveyed. In Spain and Greece, around seven-in-ten say the EU is doing at least a somewhat good job, and about six-in-ten or more in the UK, Italy, Sweden and France agree. The Dutch and Germans have more mixed feelings about how the EU is responding to climate change. Notably, only about one-in-ten say the EU is doing a very bad job handling climate change in every European country surveyed but Sweden, where only 5% say so.
Seven-in-ten Canadians believe the EU is doing a good job dealing with climate change, and 62% in the U.S. express the same view.
The Asia-Pacific publics surveyed report similarly positive attitudes on the EU’s climate plans. Around seven-in-ten Australians and Singaporeans consider the EU’s response to climate change at least somewhat good. About six-in-ten or more in New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan echo this sentiment.
Climate change actions by UN seen positively among most surveyed
Majorities in most publics also consider the UN response to climate change to be good. A median of 49% across all publics surveyed say that the UN’s actions are somewhat good, and a median of 5% say the actions are very good.
Canadians evaluate the UN’s performance on climate more positively than Americans do. In Canada, roughly six-in-ten say the multilateral organization is doing at least a somewhat good job handling climate change. About half of those in the U.S. agree with that evaluation, with 43% of Americans saying the UN is doing a bad job of dealing with climate change.
In Europe, majorities in Spain, Sweden, the UK, Greece and Italy approve of how the UN is dealing with climate change. Fewer than half of adults in the Netherlands, France and Belgium agree with this evaluation, and only about a third in Germany say the same.
Singaporeans stand out as the greatest share of adults among those surveyed who see the UN’s handling of climate change as good. This includes 14% who say the UN response is very good, which is at least double the share in all other societies surveyed. Majorities in Australia and New Zealand similarly say that the UN is doing a good job.
Many critical of U.S. approach to climate change
In most publics surveyed, adults who say the U.S. is doing a good job of handling climate change are in the minority. A median of 33% say the U.S. is doing a somewhat good job, and a median of just 3% believe the U.S. is doing a very good job.
About half of Americans say their own country is doing a good job in dealing with global climate change, but six-in-ten Canadians say their southern neighbor is doing a bad job.
Across Europe, most think the U.S. is doing a bad job of addressing climate change, including 75% of Germans and Swedes. And at least a quarter in all European nations surveyed except the UK and Greece say the U.S. is doing a very bad job.
Singaporeans offer the U.S. approach to climate change the most praise in the Asia-Pacific region and across all publics surveyed; around half say they see the U.S. strategy positively. New Zealanders are the most critical in the Asia-Pacific region: Only about a quarter say the U.S. is doing at least a somewhat good job.
Political ideology is linked to evaluations of the U.S. climate strategy. In 12 countries, those on the right of the political spectrum are significantly more likely than those on the left to say the U.S. is doing a good job dealing with global climate change. The difference is greatest in Australia, Canada and Italy.
Few give China positive marks for handling of climate change
The publics surveyed are unenthusiastic about how China is dealing with climate change. A median of 18% across the publics say China is doing a good job, compared with a median of 78% who say the opposite. Notably, a median of 45% say that China is doing a very bad job handling climate change.
Just 18% of Americans and Canadians believe China is doing a good job handling climate change.
Similarly, few in Europe think China is dealing effectively with climate change. In fact, more than four-in-ten in nearly all European countries polled say China is doing a very bad job with regards to climate change. Criticism is less common in Greece, where a third give China positive marks for its climate change action.
Adults in the Asia-Pacific region also generally give China poor ratings for dealing with climate change. South Koreans are exceptionally critical; about two-thirds say China is doing a very bad job, the highest share in all publics surveyed. About four-in-ten or more in New Zealand, Japan and Australia concur. Singaporeans stand out, as half say China is doing a good job, nearly 20 percentage points higher than the next highest public.
In nine countries surveyed, those with less education are more positive toward China’s response to climate change than those with more education. Likewise, those with lower incomes are more inclined to provide positive evaluations of China’s climate change response. Those with less education or lower incomes are also less likely to provide a response in several publics.
CORRECTION (Oct. 13, 2021): In the chart “Publics are divided over the economic impact of international actions to address global climate change,” the “Don’t Know” column has been edited to reflect updated percentages to correct for a data tabulation error. These changes did not affect the report’s substantive findings.
- For the purpose of comparing educational groups across publics, education levels are standardized based on the UN’s International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). The “less education” category is secondary education or below and the “more education” category is postsecondary or above in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and U.S. ↩
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Global Warming 101
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- What Is Global Warming?
- What Causes Global Warming?
- How Is Global Warming Linked to Extreme Weather?
- What Are the Other Effects of Global Warming?
- Where Does the United States Stand in Terms of Global-Warming Contributors?
- Is the United States Doing Anything to Prevent Global Warming?
- Is Global Warming Too Big a Problem for Me to Help Tackle?
Q: What is global warming?
A: Since the Industrial Revolution, the global annual temperature has increased in total by a little more than 1 degree Celsius, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Between 1880—the year that accurate recordkeeping began—and 1980, it rose on average by 0.07 degrees Celsius (0.13 degrees Fahrenheit) every 10 years. Since 1981, however, the rate of increase has more than doubled: For the last 40 years, we’ve seen the global annual temperature rise by 0.18 degrees Celsius, or 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit, per decade.
The result? A planet that has never been hotter . Nine of the 10 warmest years since 1880 have occurred since 2005—and the 5 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2015. Climate change deniers have argued that there has been a “pause” or a “slowdown” in rising global temperatures, but numerous studies, including a 2018 paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters , have disproved this claim. The impacts of global warming are already harming people around the world.
Now climate scientists have concluded that we must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040 if we are to avoid a future in which everyday life around the world is marked by its worst, most devastating effects: the extreme droughts, wildfires, floods, tropical storms, and other disasters that we refer to collectively as climate change . These effects are felt by all people in one way or another but are experienced most acutely by the underprivileged, the economically marginalized, and people of color, for whom climate change is often a key driver of poverty, displacement, hunger, and social unrest.
Q: What causes global warming?
A: Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other air pollutants collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earth’s surface. Normally this radiation would escape into space, but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter. These heat-trapping pollutants—specifically carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor, and synthetic fluorinated gases—are known as greenhouse gases, and their impact is called the greenhouse effect .
Though natural cycles and fluctuations have caused the earth’s climate to change several times over the last 800,000 years, our current era of global warming is directly attributable to human activity—specifically to our burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, gasoline, and natural gas, which results in the greenhouse effect. In the United States, the largest source of greenhouse gases is transportation (29 percent), followed closely by electricity production (28 percent) and industrial activity (22 percent). Learn about the natural and human causes of climate change .
Curbing dangerous climate change requires very deep cuts in emissions, as well as the use of alternatives to fossil fuels worldwide. The good news is that countries around the globe have formally committed—as part of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement —to lower their emissions by setting new standards and crafting new policies to meet or even exceed those standards. The not-so-good news is that we’re not working fast enough. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists tell us that we need to reduce global carbon emissions by as much as 40 percent by 2030. For that to happen, the global community must take immediate, concrete steps: to decarbonize electricity generation by equitably transitioning from fossil fuel–based production to renewable energy sources like wind and solar; to electrify our cars and trucks; and to maximize energy efficiency in our buildings, appliances, and industries.
Q: How is global warming linked to extreme weather?
A: Scientists agree that the earth’s rising temperatures are fueling longer and hotter heat waves, more frequent droughts, heavier rainfall, and more powerful hurricanes .
In 2015, for example, scientists concluded that a lengthy drought in California—the state’s worst water shortage in 1,200 years —had been intensified by 15 to 20 percent by global warming. They also said the odds of similar droughts happening in the future had roughly doubled over the past century. And in 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine announced that we can now confidently attribute some extreme weather events, like heat waves, droughts, and heavy precipitation, directly to climate change.
The earth’s ocean temperatures are getting warmer, too—which means that tropical storms can pick up more energy. In other words, global warming has the ability to turn a category 3 storm into a more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early 1980s, as has the number of storms that reach categories 4 and 5. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season included a record-breaking 30 tropical storms, 6 major hurricanes, and 13 hurricanes altogether. With increased intensity come increased damage and death. The United States saw an unprecedented 22 weather and climate disasters that caused at least a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 2020, but 2017 was the costliest on record and among the deadliest as well: Taken together, that year's tropical storms (including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria) caused nearly $300 billion in damage and led to more than 3,300 fatalities.
The impacts of global warming are being felt everywhere. Extreme heat waves have caused tens of thousands of deaths around the world in recent years. And in an alarming sign of events to come, Antarctica has lost nearly four trillion metric tons of ice since the 1990s. The rate of loss could speed up if we keep burning fossil fuels at our current pace, some experts say, causing sea levels to rise several meters in the next 50 to 150 years and wreaking havoc on coastal communities worldwide.
Q: What are the other effects of global warming?
A: Each year scientists learn more about the consequences of global warming , and each year we also gain new evidence of its devastating impact on people and the planet. As the heat waves, droughts, and floods associated with climate change become more frequent and more intense, communities suffer and death tolls rise. If we’re unable to reduce our emissions, scientists believe that climate change could lead to the deaths of more than 250,000 people around the globe every year and force 100 million people into poverty by 2030.
Global warming is already taking a toll on the United States. And if we aren’t able to get a handle on our emissions, here’s just a smattering of what we can look forward to:
- Disappearing glaciers , early snowmelt, and severe droughts will cause more dramatic water shortages and continue to increase the risk of wildfires in the American West.
- Rising sea levels will lead to even more coastal flooding on the Eastern Seaboard, especially in Florida, and in other areas such as the Gulf of Mexico.
- Forests, farms, and cities will face troublesome new pests , heat waves, heavy downpours, and increased flooding . All of these can damage or destroy agriculture and fisheries.
- Disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and alpine meadows could drive many plant and animal species to extinction.
- Allergies, asthma, and infectious disease outbreaks will become more common due to increased growth of pollen-producing ragweed , higher levels of air pollution , and the spread of conditions favorable to pathogens and mosquitoes.
Though everyone is affected by climate change, not everyone is affected equally. Indigenous people, people of color, and the economically marginalized are typically hit the hardest . Inequities built into our housing , health care , and labor systems make these communities more vulnerable to the worst impacts of climate change—even though these same communities have done the least to contribute to it.
Q: Where does the United States stand in terms of global-warming contributors?
A: In recent years, China has taken the lead in global-warming pollution , producing about 26 percent of all CO2 emissions. The United States comes in second. Despite making up just 4 percent of the world’s population, our nation produces a sobering 13 percent of all global CO2 emissions—nearly as much as the European Union and India (third and fourth place) combined. And America is still number one, by far, in cumulative emissions over the past 150 years. As a top contributor to global warming, the United States has an obligation to help propel the world to a cleaner, safer, and more equitable future. Our responsibility matters to other countries, and it should matter to us, too.
Q: Is the United States doing anything to prevent global warming?
A: We’ve started. But in order to avoid the worsening effects of climate change, we need to do a lot more—together with other countries—to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and transition to clean energy sources.
Under the administration of President Donald Trump (a man who falsely referred to global warming as a “hoax”), the United States withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolled back or eliminated dozens of clean-air protections, and opened up federally managed lands, including culturally sacred national monuments , to fossil fuel development. Although President Biden has pledged to get the country back on track, years of inaction during and before the Trump administration—and our increased understanding of global warming’s serious impacts—mean we must accelerate our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite the lack of cooperation from the Trump administration, local and state governments made great strides during this period through efforts like the American Cities Climate Challenge and ongoing collaborations like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative . Meanwhile, industry and business leaders have been working with the public sector, creating and adopting new clean-energy technologies and increasing energy efficiency in buildings, appliances, and industrial processes. Today the American automotive industry is finding new ways to produce cars and trucks that are more fuel efficient and is committing itself to putting more and more zero-emission electric vehicles on the road. Developers, cities, and community advocates are coming together to make sure that new affordable housing is built with efficiency in mind , reducing energy consumption and lowering electric and heating bills for residents. And renewable energy continues to surge as the costs associated with its production and distribution keep falling. In 2020 renewable energy sources such as wind and solar provided more electricity than coal for the very first time in U.S. history.
President Biden has made action on global warming a high priority. On his first day in office, he recommitted the United States to the Paris Climate Agreement, sending the world community a strong signal that we were determined to join other nations in cutting our carbon pollution to support the shared goal of preventing the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. (Scientists say we must stay below a 2-degree increase to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.) And significantly, the president has assembled a climate team of experts and advocates who have been tasked with pursuing action both abroad and at home while furthering the cause of environmental justice and investing in nature-based solutions.
Q: Is global warming too big a problem for me to help tackle?
A: No! While we can’t win the fight without large-scale government action at the national level , we also can’t do it without the help of individuals who are willing to use their voices, hold government and industry leaders to account, and make changes in their daily habits.
Wondering how you can be a part of the fight against global warming? Reduce your own carbon footprint by taking a few easy steps: Make conserving energy a part of your daily routine and your decisions as a consumer. When you shop for new appliances like refrigerators, washers, and dryers, look for products with the government’s ENERGY STAR ® label; they meet a higher standard for energy efficiency than the minimum federal requirements. When you buy a car, look for one with the highest gas mileage and lowest emissions. You can also reduce your emissions by taking public transportation or carpooling when possible.
And while new federal and state standards are a step in the right direction, much more needs to be done. Voice your support of climate-friendly and climate change preparedness policies, and tell your representatives that equitably transitioning from dirty fossil fuels to clean power should be a top priority—because it’s vital to building healthy, more secure communities.
You don’t have to go it alone, either. Movements across the country are showing how climate action can build community , be led by those on the front lines of its impacts, and create a future that’s equitable and just for all .
Demand Climate Action
This story was originally published on March 11, 2016 and has been updated with new information and links.
NRDC.org stories are available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these conditions: The writer(s) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the story was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the story cannot be edited (beyond simple things such as time and place elements, style, and grammar); you can’t resell the story in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you can’t republish our material wholesale or automatically—you need to select stories individually; you can't republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; you should drop us a note to let us know when you’ve used one of our stories.
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Human activity affects global surface temperatures by changing Earth ’s radiative balance—the “give and take” between what comes in during the day and what Earth emits at night. Increases in greenhouse gases —i.e., trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that absorb heat energy emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiate it back—generated by industry and transportation cause the atmosphere to retain more heat, which increases temperatures and alters precipitation patterns.
Global warming, the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries, happens mostly in the troposphere , the lowest level of the atmosphere, which extends from Earth’s surface up to a height of 6–11 miles. This layer contains most of Earth’s clouds and is where living things and their habitats and weather primarily occur.
Continued global warming is expected to impact everything from energy use to water availability to crop productivity throughout the world. Poor countries and communities with limited abilities to adapt to these changes are expected to suffer disproportionately. Global warming is already being associated with increases in the incidence of severe and extreme weather, heavy flooding , and wildfires —phenomena that threaten homes, dams, transportation networks, and other facets of human infrastructure. Learn more about how the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, describes the social impacts of global warming.
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 global warming have been the most pronounced at the poles, where they often make the difference between frozen and melted ice. Polar bears rely on small gaps in the ice to hunt their prey. As these gaps widen because of continued melting, prey capture has become more challenging for these animals.
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global warming , the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near the surface of Earth over the past one to two centuries. Climate scientists have since the mid-20th century gathered detailed observations of various weather phenomena (such as temperatures, precipitation , and storms) and of related influences on climate (such as ocean currents and the atmosphere’s chemical composition). These data indicate that Earth’s climate has changed over almost every conceivable timescale since the beginning of geologic time and that human activities since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have a growing influence over the pace and extent of present-day climate change .
Giving voice to a growing conviction of most of the scientific community , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2021, noted that the best estimate of the increase in global average surface temperature between 1850 and 2019 was 1.07 °C (1.9 °F). An IPCC special report produced in 2018 noted that human beings and their activities have been responsible for a worldwide average temperature increase between 0.8 and 1.2 °C (1.4 and 2.2 °F) since preindustrial times, and most of the warming over the second half of the 20th century could be attributed to human activities.
AR6 produced a series of global climate predictions based on modeling five greenhouse gas emission scenarios that accounted for future emissions, mitigation (severity reduction) measures, and uncertainties in the model projections. Some of the main uncertainties include the precise role of feedback processes and the impacts of industrial pollutants known as aerosols , which may offset some warming. The lowest-emissions scenario, which assumed steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2015, predicted that the global mean surface temperature would increase between 1.0 and 1.8 °C (1.8 and 3.2 °F) by 2100 relative to the 1850–1900 average. This range stood in stark contrast to the highest-emissions scenario, which predicted that the mean surface temperature would rise between 3.3 and 5.7 °C (5.9 and 10.2 °F) by 2100 based on the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions would continue to increase throughout the 21st century. The intermediate-emissions scenario, which assumed that emissions would stabilize by 2050 before declining gradually, projected an increase of between 2.1 and 3.5 °C (3.8 and 6.3 °F) by 2100.
Many climate scientists agree that significant societal, economic, and ecological damage would result if the global average temperature rose by more than 2 °C (3.6 °F) in such a short time. Such damage would include increased extinction of many plant and animal species, shifts in patterns of agriculture , and rising sea levels. By 2015 all but a few national governments had begun the process of instituting carbon reduction plans as part of the Paris Agreement , a treaty designed to help countries keep global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels in order to avoid the worst of the predicted effects. Whereas authors of the 2018 special report noted that should carbon emissions continue at their present rate, the increase in average near-surface air temperature would reach 1.5 °C sometime between 2030 and 2052, authors of the AR6 report suggested that this threshold would be reached by 2041 at the latest.
The AR6 report also noted that the global average sea level had risen by some 20 cm (7.9 inches) between 1901 and 2018 and that sea level rose faster in the second half of the 20th century than in the first half. It also predicted, again depending on a wide range of scenarios, that the global average sea level would rise by different amounts by 2100 relative to the 1995–2014 average. Under the report’s lowest-emission scenario, sea level would rise by 28–55 cm (11–21.7 inches), whereas, under the intermediate emissions scenario, sea level would rise by 44–76 cm (17.3–29.9 inches). The highest-emissions scenario suggested that sea level would rise by 63–101 cm (24.8–39.8 inches) by 2100.
The scenarios referred to above depend mainly on future concentrations of certain trace gases, called greenhouse gases , that have been injected into the lower atmosphere in increasing amounts through the burning of fossil fuels for industry, transportation , and residential uses. Modern global warming is the result of an increase in magnitude of the so-called greenhouse effect , a warming of Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere caused by the presence of water vapour , carbon dioxide , methane , nitrous oxides , and other greenhouse gases. In 2014 the IPCC first reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere surpassed those found in ice cores dating back 800,000 years.
Of all these gases, carbon dioxide is the most important, both for its role in the greenhouse effect and for its role in the human economy. It has been estimated that, at the beginning of the industrial age in the mid-18th century, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). By the end of 2022 they had risen to 419 ppm, and, if fossil fuels continue to be burned at current rates, they are projected to reach 550 ppm by the mid-21st century—essentially, a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in 300 years.
A vigorous debate is in progress over the extent and seriousness of rising surface temperatures, the effects of past and future warming on human life, and the need for action to reduce future warming and deal with its consequences. This article provides an overview of the scientific background and public policy debate 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, the possible ecological and social impacts of rising temperatures, and the public policy developments since the mid-20th century. For a detailed description of Earth’s climate, its processes, and the responses of living things to its changing nature, see climate . For additional background on how Earth’s climate has changed throughout geologic time , see climatic variation and change . For a full description of Earth’s gaseous envelope, within which climate change and global warming occur, see atmosphere .
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Climate change and health
- Climate change affects the social and environmental determinants of health – clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter.
- Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.
- The direct damage costs to health (i.e. excluding costs in health-determining sectors such as agriculture and water and sanitation), is estimated to be between USD 2-4 billion/year by 2030.
- Areas with weak health infrastructure – mostly in developing countries – will be the least able to cope without assistance to prepare and respond.
- Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases through better transport, food and energy-use choices can result in improved health, particularly through reduced air pollution.
Climate change - the biggest health threat facing humanity
Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that to avert catastrophic health impacts and prevent millions of climate change-related deaths, the world must limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Past emissions have already made a certain level of global temperature rise and other changes to the climate inevitable. Global heating of even 1.5°C is not considered safe, however; every additional tenth of a degree of warming will take a serious toll on people’s lives and health.
While no one is safe from these risks, the people whose health is being harmed first and worst by the climate crisis are the people who contribute least to its causes, and who are least able to protect themselves and their families against it - people in low-income and disadvantaged countries and communities.
The climate crisis threatens to undo the last fifty years of progress in development, global health, and poverty reduction, and to further widen existing health inequalities between and within populations. It severely jeopardizes the realization of universal health coverage (UHC) in various ways – including by compounding the existing burden of disease and by exacerbating existing barriers to accessing health services, often at the times when they are most needed. Over 930 million people - around 12% of the world’s population - spend at least 10% of their household budget to pay for health care. With the poorest people largely uninsured, health shocks and stresses already currently push around 100 million people into poverty every year, with the impacts of climate change worsening this trend.
Climate-sensitive health risks
Climate change is already impacting health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues. Furthermore, climate change is undermining many of the social determinants for good health, such as livelihoods, equality and access to health care and social support structures. These climate-sensitive health risks are disproportionately felt by the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, including women, children, ethnic minorities, poor communities, migrants or displaced persons, older populations, and those with underlying health conditions.
Figure: An overview of climate-sensitive health risks, their exposure pathways and vulnerability factors. Climate change impacts health both directly and indirectly, and is strongly mediated by environmental, social and public health determinants.
Although it is unequivocal that climate change affects human health, it remains challenging to accurately estimate the scale and impact of many climate-sensitive health risks. However, scientific advances progressively allow us to attribute an increase in morbidity and mortality to human-induced warming, and more accurately determine the risks and scale of these health threats.
In the short- to medium-term, the health impacts of climate change will be determined mainly by the vulnerability of populations, their resilience to the current rate of climate change and the extent and pace of adaptation. In the longer-term, the effects will increasingly depend on the extent to which transformational action is taken now to reduce emissions and avoid the breaching of dangerous temperature thresholds and potential irreversible tipping points.
COP26 Health Programme
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Climate change: How global warming fuelled extreme climate disasters in 2022
The summer of 2022 has seen one climate-related disaster after another. Image: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
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CO2 Emissions in 2022
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IEA (2023), CO2 Emissions in 2022 , IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2022, License: CC BY 4.0
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CO2 Emissions in 2022 provides a complete picture of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in 2022. The report finds that global growth in emissions was not as high as some had originally feared amid the disruptions caused by the global energy crisis. This latest release brings together the IEA’s latest analysis, combining the Agency’s estimates of CO2 emissions from all energy sources and industrial processes, as well as providing information on energy-related methane and nitrous oxide emissions.
- Global energy-related CO 2 emissions grew by 0.9% or 321 Mt in 2022, reaching a new high of over 36.8 Gt. Following two years of exceptional oscillations in energy use and emissions, caused in part by the Covid-19 pandemic, last year’s growth was much slower than 2021’s rebound of more than 6%. Emissions from energy combustion increased by 423 Mt, while emissions from industrial processes decreased by 102 Mt.
- In a year marked by energy price shocks, rising inflation, and disruptions to traditional fuel trade flows, global growth in emissions was lower than feared , despite gas-to-coal switching in many countries. Increased deployment of clean energy technologies such as renewables, electric vehicles, and heat pumps helped prevent an additional 550 Mt in CO 2 emissions. Industrial production curtailment, particularly in China and Europe, also averted additional emissions.
- Specific challenges in 2022 contributed to the growth in emissions. Of the 321 Mt CO 2 increase, 60 Mt CO 2 can be attributed to cooling and heating demand in extreme weather and another 55 Mt CO 2 to nuclear power plants being offline.
- CO 2 growth in 2022 was well below global GDP growth of 3.2% , reverting to a decade-long trend of decoupling emissions and economic growth that was broken by 2021’s sharp rebound in emissions. Improvements in the CO 2 intensity of energy use were slightly slower than the past decade’s average.
- Emissions from natural gas fell by 1.6% or 118 Mt , following continued tightening of supply exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Reductions in emissions from gas were particularly pronounced in Europe (-13.5%). The Asia Pacific region also saw unprecedented reductions (-1.8%).
- Increased emissions from coal more than offset reductions from natural gas . Amid a wave of gas-to-coal switching during the global energy crisis, CO 2 emissions from coal grew by 1.6% or 243 Mt, far exceeding the last decade’s average growth rate, and reaching a new all-time high of almost 15.5 Gt.
- Emissions from oil grew even more than emissions from coal, rising by 2.5% or 268 Mt to 11.2 Gt. Around half of the increase came from aviation, as air travel continued to rebound from pandemic lows, nearing 80% of 2019 levels. Tempering this increase, electric vehicles continued to gain momentum in 2022, with over 10 million cars sold, exceeding 14% of global car sales.
- The biggest sectoral increase in emissions in 2022 came from electricity and heat generation, whose emissions were up by 1.8% or 261 Mt. In particular, global emissions from coal-fired electricity and heat generation grew by 224 Mt or 2.1%, led by emerging economies in Asia.
- A strong expansion of renewables limited the rebound in coal power emissions . Renewables met 90% of last year’s global growth in electricity generation. Solar PV and wind generation each increased by around 275 TWh, a new annual record.
- Emissions from industry declined by 1.7% to 9.2 Gt last year . While several regions saw manufacturing curtailments, the global decline was largely driven by a 161 Mt CO 2 decrease in China’s industry emissions, reflecting a 10% decline in cement production and a 2% decline in steel making.
- China’s emissions were relatively flat in 2022, declining by 23 Mt or 0.2%. Growing emissions from combustion were offset by declines from industrial processes. Weaker economic growth, declining construction activity, and strict Covid-19 measures led to reductions in industrial and transport emissions. Power sector emissions growth slowed compared with the average of the past decade but still reached 2.6%.
- The European Union saw a 2.5% or 70 Mt reduction in CO 2 emissions despite oil and gas market disruptions, hydro shortfalls due to drought, and numerous nuclear plants going offline. Buildings sector emissions fell markedly, helped by a mild winter. Although power sector emissions increased by 3.4%, coal use was not as high as anticipated. For the first time, electricity generation from wind and solar PV combined exceeded that of gas or nuclear.
- US emissions grew by 0.8% or 36 Mt. The buildings sector saw the highest emissions growth, driven by extreme temperatures. The main emissions reductions came from electricity and heat generation, thanks to unprecedented increases in solar PV and wind, as well as coal-to-gas switching. While many other countries reduced their natural gas use, the United States saw an increase of 89 Mt in CO 2 emissions from gas, as it was called upon to meet peak electricity demand during summer heat waves.
- Emissions from Asia’s emerging market and developing economies, excluding China, grew more than those from any other region in 2022, increasing by 4.2% or 206 Mt CO 2 . Over half of the region’s increase in emissions came from coal-fired power generation.
This report is the first in the IEA’s new series, the Global Energy Transitions Stocktake . The new tracker consolidates the IEA’s latest analysis in one place, making it freely accessible in support of the first Global Stocktake in the lead-up to COP 28.
Global carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions from energy combustion and industrial processes 1 grew 0.9% or 321 Mt in 2022 to a new all-time high of 36.8 Gt. This estimate is based on the IEA’s detailed region-by-region and fuel-by-fuel analysis, incorporating the latest official national statistics and publicly available data on energy use, economic indicators, and weather.
Last year’s increase follows two years of exceptional oscillations in energy-related emissions. Emissions shrank by more than 5% in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic cut energy demand. In 2021, emissions rebounded past pre-pandemic levels, growing more than 6% in tandem with economic stimulus and the roll-out of vaccines.
Annual change in global CO2 emissions from energy combustion and industrial processes, 1900-2022
Global co2 emissions from energy combustion and industrial processes, 1900-2022.
CO 2 emissions from energy combustion grew by around 1.3% or 423 Mt in 2022, while CO 2 emissions from industrial processes declined by 102 Mt. Emissions growth in 2022 was below global GDP growth (+3.2%), reverting to a decades-long trend of decoupling emissions and economic growth that was broken in 2021. Meanwhile, improvements in CO 2 intensity of energy use were slightly slower than the past decade’s (2012-2021) annual average.
There were divergent trends between regions and sectors. CO 2 emissions grew in North America and Asia (excluding People’s Republic of China [“China” hereafter]), outweighing reductions from Europe and China. At a global level, CO 2 emissions from power and transport (including international bunkers) grew by 261 Mt and 254 Mt, respectively, more than offsetting reductions from industry and buildings.
Change in CO2 emissions by sector, 2021-2022
Change in co2 emissions by region, 2021-2022.
In an exceptionally turbulent year with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, energy price shocks, rising inflation, and major disruptions to traditional fuel trade flows, global growth in emissions was lower than anticipated.
Impressive growth of solar PV and wind generation helped prevent around 465 Mt CO 2 in power sector emissions. Other clean energy technologies, including other renewables, electric vehicles, and heat pumps, helped prevent an additional roughly 85 Mt CO 2 . Without this increased growth in clean energy deployment, the annual increase in energy-related emissions would have been almost triple. Emissions reductions also resulted from economic slowdowns, including 155 Mt CO 2 from decreases in energy-intensive industrial production, mainly in China, the European Union, Japan, Korea and North America.
Specific challenges in 2022 also contributed to the global increase in emissions. Of the overall increase of 321 Mt CO 2 , extreme temperatures contributed 60 Mt from heating and cooling for buildings. The decline in nuclear power generation, due to both maintenance and continued phase-outs, led to another 55 Mt CO 2 .
Change in global CO2 emissions by driver, 2021-2022
Emissions from natural gas decreased by 1.6% or 118 Mt in 2022, as an already tight gas supply was exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the widespread trade disruptions that followed.
Emissions reductions were particularly pronounced in Europe, where they fell by 13.5%, with the strongest year-on-year reductions coming in the last months of the year. European gas prices reached record highs in 2022 following a sharp decline in Russian gas flows. However, a mild start to winter helped reduce household heating demand. In the Asia Pacific, LNG spot prices also spiked, and natural gas emissions declined by 1.8%, the largest year-on-year decline ever seen in the region. By contrast, natural gas demand remained robust in the United States and Canada, where emissions from gas increased by 5.8%.
Coal emissions grew 243 Mt to a new all-time high of almost 15.5 Gt. This 1.6% increase was faster than the 0.4% annual average growth over the past decade.
Change in global CO2 emissions by fuel, relative to 2019 levels, 2015-2022
Emissions from oil grew by 2.5% (or 268 Mt) to 11.2 Gt in 2022. Around half of the year-on-year increase came from aviation as air travel continued its recovery from pandemic lows. The rebound to pre-pandemic emissions levels was faster in advanced economies, where last year’s aviation emissions reached 85% of 2019 levels, compared with 73% in emerging market and developing economies.
Total transport emissions increased by 2.1% (or 137 Mt), also driven by growth in advanced economies. Nonetheless, emissions would have been higher without the accelerating deployment of low-carbon vehicles. Electric car sales surpassed 10 million in 2022, making up over 14% of global sales. If all new electric cars on the road had been typical diesel or gasoline cars, global emissions last year would have been another 13 Mt higher.
The largest absolute sectoral increase in emissions in 2022 was from electricity and heat generation. Electricity and heat sector emissions increased by 1.8% (or 261 Mt), reaching an all-time high of 14.6 Gt. Gas-to-coal switching in many regions was the main driver of this growth: CO 2 from coal-fired power generation grew by 2.1%, led by increases in Asian emerging market and developing economies. Natural gas emissions in the power sector remained close to 2021 levels, propped up most significantly by an increase in the United States.
Global electricity demand increased by 2.7%, and overall carbon intensity of the electricity generation declined by 2.0%, resuming a nine-year trend that had been broken in 2021.
The resumed decline in carbon intensity resulted from the fast deployment of renewables across all regions, with renewables meeting 90% of global growth in electricity demand. Solar PV and wind generation each increased by around 275 TWh, helping to avoid around 465 Mt in power sector emissions. Although several countries registered severe droughts in 2022, global hydro generation grew by 52 TWh from 2021’s levels, which were low because of water shortages in many regions.
Global CO2 emissions by sector, 2019-2022
Emissions were pushed up by reliance on fossil fuel power plants to meet excess cooling demand during extreme summer heat, with cooling degree days across several regions in 2022 exceeding typical levels or even the maximum seen between 2000 and 2021. In the United States, the share of natural gas in the power fuel mix surpassed 40% in July and August. Coal power generation in China increased in August by around 15% year-on-year to exceed 500 TWh. In both countries, emissions levels for the first half of the year were lower than in 2021, before summer heat waves reversed the trend.
Europe saw the second warmest start to winter in the last 30 years, and as a result, emissions from buildings were lower than anticipated.
For the full year, cooling and heating demand from extreme weather pushed up global emissions by around 60 Mt CO 2 , around two-thirds of which came from additional cooling needs, and the remaining third from heating needs. This accounted for almost one-fifth of the total global increase in CO 2 emissions.
Heating degree days in winter months for selected countries and regions, 2000-2022
Cooling degree days in summer months for selected countries and regions, 2000-2022.
Energy-related emissions in China were relatively flat between 2021 and 2022, decreasing by 0.2% or 23 Mt to around 12.1 Gt. Emissions from energy combustion alone grew by 88 Mt, entirely due to increased use of coal, but this was more than offset by declines in emissions from industrial processes. The overall yearly decline was the first since structural reforms drove emissions lower in 2015.
While China significantly ramped up domestic coal production and coal power capacity additions last year, actual coal consumption did not fully keep pace. Tempered by a large increase in solar PV and wind generation, coal accounted for around three-fifths of the fuel mix in electricity generation. Total electricity demand grew much slower than the average seen over the last decade. As such, emissions from coal-fired power increased by around 3%, in part due to the ramp-up of coal power plants during heat waves, as well as to increasing reliance on electricity or district heating fuelled by coal.
Industry sector emissions declined, but the effects of China’s crackdown on debt-financed property and the ongoing real estate slump were not fully reflected in 2022 industry emissions. Construction new starts were down by around 40% year-on-year, while the production of steel and cement were just 2% and 10% lower than in 2021, respectively. As a result, China’s industry sector emitted 161 Mt less than the year before, with a large share of this decline from process emissions. China’s unprecedentedly large year-on-year decline pulled down global industry emissions.
In contrast to the global growth in transport sector emissions, China’s transport emissions registered a 3.1% decrease in 2022. Covid-19 measures were strongly reinforced in comparison to 2021, including total lockdowns in major cities and restrictions on crossing prefecture or province boundaries. At the same time, electric car sales reached 6 million in 2022, preventing further emissions from diesel and gasoline cars.
US emissions grew by 0.8% (or 36 Mt) to 4.7 Gt in 2022. The annual growth was much slower than 2021’s spurt but still a deviation from the previous decade’s declining trend. While most other countries shifted away from natural gas in the face of last year’s price spikes, the United States increased its consumption. Emissions from natural gas increased 89 Mt, more than supplanting the 69 Mt decline in coal emissions.
Emissions grew the most in the buildings sector, rising 26 Mt and far exceeding the last decade’s annual average growth (around 7 Mt per year). The jump was mostly caused by cold weather during the early months of the year.
Power sector emissions decreased by 20 Mt, in large part thanks to solar PV and wind generation increasing by around 95 TWh. Without last year’s rise in renewables, power sector emissions would have been around 65 Mt CO 2 higher. However, power generation contributed more than half of the growth in natural gas emissions, as the trend of coal-to-gas switching resumed after a strong coal rebound in 2021, with natural gas power plants meeting peak cooling demand during the summer’s heat waves.
Despite the coinciding challenges of oil and gas market disruptions, hydro shortfalls due to drought, and numerous nuclear plants going offline, the European Union reduced its emissions by 2.5% (or 70 Mt), thanks to a mild winter, effective energy conservation measures, fuel switching, behaviour changes, and industrial production curtailments. Reduced natural gas emissions more than offset increases in emissions from coal and oil.
Buildings sector emissions declined the most, by 60 Mt, enabled by exceptionally mild weather from October to December 2022 – the second warmest start to winter in the last 30 years – and collective energy conservation measures. Average electricity consumption was lower, even accounting for weather, and electricity use was less sensitive to temperature changes in 2022 than in 2019, pointing to the role of behaviour change. EU heat pump sales reached 2.8 million, more than doubling in several countries from the previous year. Meanwhile industry sector CO 2 emissions declined by 42 Mt.
Daily average electricity load at different temperatures in the European Union, 2019 and 2022
Power sector emissions increased by 28 Mt even though electricity demand declined, as a temporarily higher reliance on coal increased carbon intensity. A 15% increase in wind and solar PV generation helped prevent further coal use with wind and solar PV for the first time jointly overtaking gas as well as nuclear as the top source of Europe’s electricity generation. This record-breaking increase in solar PV and wind generation avoided almost 75 Mt CO 2 of emissions. Without hydro generation decreasing by 21% year-on-year and nuclear by 17%, another 80 Mt could have been averted.
Countries responded to the high energy prices and energy security concerns caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with energy conservation measures, fuel switching, and an acceleration of clean energy technology deployment.
Emissions trends now stand in contrast to those seen after the 2008 global financial crisis. Energy intensity of GDP is now 3.5% below 2019 pre-pandemic levels, compared to 2% below three years after the onset of the financial crisis. CO 2 intensity of energy use in 2022 was lower than before the pandemic, after a short-lived rebound in 2021, unlike the increase that emerged in the early 2010s.
The large green spending component of stimulus packages appears to be making a lasting impact on controlling emissions growth. Between April 2020 and October 2022, economic recovery packages enacted by governments worldwide included USD 1 215 billion in clean energy investment support, as detailed in the IEA’s Government Energy Spending Tracker . This is well over twice the financial commitments made to green recovery measures after the financial crisis.
Global emissions intensity of energy use and energy intensity of economic activity, 2019-2022
Global emissions intensity of energy use and energy intensity of economic activity, 2008-2011.
Total energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.0% to an all-time high of 41.3 Gt CO 2 -eq (see “Data sources and method” for global warming potential values). CO 2 emissions from energy combustion and industrial process accounted for 89% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in 2022.
Methane from energy combustion, leaks and venting represented another 10%, mostly coming from onshore oil and gas operations as well as steam coal production. Methane emissions rose to nearly 135 Mt CH 4 or around 4 Gt CO 2 -eq in 2022, despite high natural gas prices that increased the cost effectiveness of methane abatement technologies.
Global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, 2000-2022
The IEA draws upon a wide range of respected statistical sources to construct estimates of energy demand, energy-related CO 2 and other greenhouse gas emissions for the year 2022. Sources include the latest monthly data submissions to the IEA Energy Data Centre, real-time data from power system operators across the world, statistical releases from national administrations, and recent data from the IEA Market Report series that covers coal, oil, natural gas, renewables, electricity and energy efficiency. Where data are not available on an annual or monthly basis, estimates are used.
The scope of CO 2 emissions in this report includes emissions from all uses of fossil fuels for energy purposes, including the combustion of non-renewable waste, as well as emissions from industrial processes such as cement, iron and steel, and chemicals production. Estimates of industrial process emissions draw upon the latest production data for iron and steel, clinker for cement, aluminium, and chemicals. CO 2 emissions from the combustion of flared gases are also included in estimates of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.
Non-CO 2 greenhouse gas emissions include fugitive emissions from oil, gas and coal supply. Methane and nitrous oxide emissions related to energy combustion are also evaluated, based on typical emissions factors for the corresponding end uses and regions. When converting non-CO 2 greenhouse gas emissions to equivalent quantities, a global warming potential over a 100-year period is used, with global warming potential values of 30 for methane and 273 for nitrous oxide.
Economic growth rates underlying this analysis are those published by the International Monetary Fund’s January 2023 World Economic Outlook update. All monetary quantities are expressed in USD (2021) in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms.
All subsequent mentions of CO 2 emissions refer to CO 2 emissions from energy combustion and industrial processes, unless otherwise specified. Further details about methodology are at the end of the report.
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Study reveals global algae blooms are growing, and warming waters may be to blame
Social sharing, study finds coastal phytoplankton blooms grew by almost half the size of canada.
Swirling blooms of turquoise phytoplankton along coasts may be happening more often and getting bigger, according to new research published in Nature , raising concerns about the impacts of climate change on the world's oceans.
Using data captured by NASA's Aqua satellite, scientists have tracked coastal phytoplankton blooms over 17 years, between 2003 and 2020.
Phytoplankton are microscopic algae, and a "bloom" is a sudden explosion of them, sometimes covering hundreds of square kilometres of ocean.
The study found that over that period, the global median frequency of algal blooms increased by 59 per cent, and the total area affected by the blooms expanded by nearly 4 million square kilometres — close to half the size of Canada.
The study highlighted links between the surge in blooms and climate change, specifically increased ocean surface temperature and changes in ocean circulation.
While phytoplankton are a fundamental source of food for marine life, and generally linked to healthy oceans and productive fisheries, the findings also raise concerns. As the old saying goes, it's possible to have too much of a good thing.
Overabundance and dead zones
Daniel Boyce, a co-author on the study and a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said when there's a rapid growth of phytoplankton, the algae sometimes grow faster than they are consumed.
When those algae die, they are decomposed by bacteria, which in turn use up oxygen and produce carbon dioxide, essentially suffocating life and creating dead zones.
"We have these big fish die offs and it's really hazardous to marine life," he said.
The satellite data collected by Boyce and his colleagues isn't able to determine whether the blooms were harmful or not, which is why the study authors say more research is needed.
"It's troubling because it's a change. We don't know if this is a good change or a bad change," Boyce said.
"This study highlights that there is a change that's happening. It's related to climate change. We know that it could be a bad thing for marine life and for fisheries and for healthy oceans, but we just don't know."
Previous research has suggested the warming ocean could contribute to an overall decline in phytoplankton . The study authors say what they found was that the extreme temperature fluctuations caused by climate change may also be linked to more frequent and larger blooms on a global scale.
- Our oceans are hotter than ever. Scientists say they worry about what that means for our future
"Although overall the plankton levels are declining, we're also getting these extreme pulses," Boyce said.
Tiny organisms support life in oceans and on land
The paper adds to a growing body of research into how the warming ocean may affect the tiny organisms.
"We cannot sample the ocean everywhere, every time in a single millimetre space. So that's when the satellite data becomes quite useful," said Maycira Costa, a professor who specializes in coastal oceanography at the University of Victoria.
In her research along the coast of British Columbia, Costa has not seen an increase in the number of phytoplankton blooms, though she noted that definitions of what counts as a "bloom" vary between the local and global scale.
One trend that Costa has noticed is a shift in bloom timing.
- What on Earth? Warming oceans are threatening the Inuit way of life
She said during El Niño years, when the ocean tends to be warmer, phytoplankton blooms off the B.C. coast can happen earlier in the spring. That may cause a timing mismatch with zooplankton, she said.
Zooplankton, which are tiny marine animals, eat phytoplankton. If their populations explode at different times, there could a chain reaction affecting the larger creatures that eat zooplankton, and so on.
"There could be a cascading phenomenon happening all the way to … wild salmon," Costa said.
While phytoplankton are small, they are crucial to life on land and in the water, Costa said. Not only are they a cornerstone of marine life, the organisms are also one of the largest contributors to oxygen in the atmosphere.
"We do exist in part because of the phytoplankton," she said.
Costa said more research is needed on the regional level to understand how blooms may change as the climate changes, and how that might impact larger ecosystems.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jaela Bernstien is a Montreal-based journalist who covers stories about climate change and the environment for CBC News. She has a decade of experience and files regularly for web, radio and TV. She won a CAJ award as part of a team investigating black-market labour in Quebec. You can reach her at [email protected]
- Follow Jaela Bernstien on Twitter
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New Study Could Help Pinpoint Hidden Helium Gas Fields -- And Avert a Global Supply Crisis
Wisconsin cave holds tantalizing clues to ancient climate changes, future shifts, earlier take-off could lead to fewer bumblebees and less pollination, keto vs vegan: study of popular diets finds over fourfold difference in carbon footprints, on a warming planet, these arctic geese rapidly found (and shared) a new migratory route, reassessment of storegga event: second major landslide recognized, a fifth of california's sierra nevada conifer forests are stranded in habitats that have grown too warm for them.
- Breathing Is Going to Get Tougher
Pakistan Streamflow Timing Will Become Three Times Faster by End of Century
Clues about the northeast's past and future climate from plant fossils, one is bad enough: climate change raises the threat of back-to-back hurricanes, human-wildlife conflicts rising worldwide with climate change, satellites observe speed-up of glaciers on the antarctic peninsula, new study reveals biodiversity loss drove ecological collapse after the 'great dying'.
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- Our Future Climate Depends Partly on Soil Microbes -- But How Are They Affected by Climate Change?
- Climate Change Likely to Uproot More Amazon Trees
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- NASA Says 2022 Fifth Warmest Year on Record, Warming Trend Continues
- Using Machine Learning to Help Monitor Climate-Induced Hazards
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- Computers That Power Self-Driving Cars Could Be a Huge Driver of Global Carbon Emissions
- Significant Reductions in Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions Still Possible
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IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth's average surface temperature over the past century primarily due to the greenhouse gases released as people burn fossil fuels. The global average surface temperature rose 0.6 to 0.9 degrees Celsius (1.1 to 1.6° F) between 1906 and 2005, and the rate of temperature increase has nearly ...
Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas, and a range of other impacts. All of these...
We already see effects scientists predicted, such as the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense heat waves. Scientists predict global temperature increases from human-made greenhouse gases will continue. Severe weather damage will also increase and intensify. En español
One of the most immediate and obvious consequences of global warming is the increase in temperatures around the world. The average global temperature has increased by about 1.4 degrees...
A warmer, wetter world is also a boon for foodborne and waterborne illnesses and disease-carrying insects, such as mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks. Higher death rates Today's scientists point to...
The paper introduces global warming, elaborates its causes and hazards and presents some solutions to solve this hot issue. Above all, alternative energy sources (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal ...
Potential effects of global warming. The path of future climate change will depend on what courses of action are taken by society—in particular the emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels. A range of alternative emissions scenarios known as representative concentration pathways (RCPs) were proposed by the IPCC in the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), which was published in ...
In their article called "Global Warming Will Happen Faster Than We Think" which was published in December 2018 addresses the topic of the increase of global temperature at an amazing and worrying speed and argues future predictions on how much time will it take to kill the human race outrunning our adaptation abilities.
The main effects of global warming will be on agricultural production and food security, on water security, on population displacement, financial damages due to natural disasters, and the humanitarian and possibly military effects of global warming.
Ball 2 beaches, and causing the increased severity of floods, which can lead to erosion which causes landslides, illustrates how wide global warming's effects on the Earth really are. Even if the consequences are more indirectly originated from the increases in temperature than directly, global warming is to blame for the increase in severity of many of the Earth's natural causes.
Shell Shock A sudden increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does more than change Earth's temperature. A lot of the carbon dioxide in the air dissolves into seawater. There, it forms carbonic acid in a process called ocean acidification.
The effects of global warming on the risk of allergies and autoimmune diseases ... Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. Contribution: Conceptualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Search for more papers by this author ... EMBO Reports ...
"It is unequivocal that the increase of CO 2, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere over the industrial era is the result of human activities and that human influence is the principal driver of many changes observed across the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere.
For this report, we conducted nationally representative Pew Research Center surveys of 16,254 adults from March 12 to May 26, 2021, in 16 advanced economies. ... economies surveyed are divided as to whether actions by the international community can successfully reduce the effects of global warming. Overall, a median of 52% lack confidence that ...
The Production Gap Report — first launched in 2019 — tracks the discrepancy between governments' planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting warming...
Now climate scientists have concluded that we must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040 if we are to avoid a future in which everyday life around the world is marked by its worst,...
This study has focused on the effects of greenhouse gas and set out the impact of global warming in several sectors of India and across the globe. Thorough implementation of technology to reduce the effects of greenhouse gas emissions has been describe in details. The term, "Greenhouse gas emission" or GHGs can be coined as the process of eliminationseveral gasses that can temperature of ...
Many climate scientists agree that significant societal, economic, and ecological damage would result if the global average temperature rose by more than 2 °C (3.6 °F) in such a short time. Such damage would include increased extinction of many plant and animal species, shifts in patterns of agriculture, and rising sea levels.
One fact that influences people's climate beliefs is the degree to which people perceive a scientific consensus about human-caused climate change (9, 10).Do people learn about the scientific consensus on climate change through discussion with family and friends?
Transformation - Research is identifying and quantifying the public health and environmental benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing tools and resources to develop a more sustainable energy system, while ensuring that the benefits are distributed equitably and improve the lives of all Americans. Research Areas for Climate Change
As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun's heat. This leads to global warming and climate change. The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded...
Key facts Climate change affects the social and environmental determinants of health - clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food and secure shelter. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress.
We concluded that global warming, the UHI effects, the loss of vegetation and the associated decrease in evapotranspiration have all contributed to the UDI effects. ... This research was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant 2019YFC1510202) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants ...
The Northern Hemisphere's extreme summer. Summer 2022 has indeed seemed to feature one climate-related disaster after another. Record-breaking heat waves baked India and Pakistan, then monsoon flooding left about a third of Pakistan under water, affecting an estimated 33 million people. Temperatures exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius ...
About this report. Global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 0.9% or 321 Mt in 2022, reaching a new high of over 36.8 Gt. Following two years of exceptional oscillations in energy use and emissions, caused in part by the Covid-19 pandemic, last year's growth was much slower than 2021's rebound of more than 6%.
The paper adds to a growing body of research into how the warming ocean may affect the tiny organisms. "We cannot sample the ocean everywhere, every time in a single millimetre space.
Global Warming Research. Learn about the causes and effects of global warming. Consider possible global warming solutions. Read predictions of rising sea levels, coral reef bleaching and mass ...
Ozone in the atmosphere warms the climate, while different components of PM can have either warming or cooling effects on the climate. For example, black carbon, a particulate pollutant from combustion, contributes to the warming of the Earth, while particulate sulfates cool the earth's atmosphere. Research on climate change and air quality ...
Climate warming is predicted to considerably affect variations in soil organic carbon (SOC), especially in alpine ecosystems. Microbial necromass carbon (MNC) is an important contributor to stable soil organic carbon pools. However, accumulation and persistence of soil MNC across a gradient of warming are still poorly understood.