![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() By 1991, two-thirds of earth and atmospheric scientists surveyed for an early consensus study said that they accepted the idea of anthropogenic global warming. Scientific agreement about climate change started to emerge in the late 1980s, when the influence of human-caused warming began to rise above natural climate variability. That’s an astounding level of consensus given the contrarian, competitive nature of the scientific enterprise, where questions like what killed the dinosaurs remain bitterly contested. Most major scientific bodies, from NASA to the World Meteorological Organization, endorse this view. But when it comes to climate change, there is virtually no debate: Numerous studies have found that more than 90 percent of scientists who study Earth’s climate agree that the planet is warming and that humans are the primary cause. There’s no denying that scientists love a good, old-fashioned argument. How much agreement is there among scientists about climate change? In the United States, daily record highs now outnumber record lows two-to-one. Land areas have warmed more than the sea surface and the Arctic has warmed the most - by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit just since the 1960s. Together, these data all tell the same story: Earth is getting hotter.Īverage global temperatures have increased by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.2 degrees Celsius, since 1880, with the greatest changes happening in the late 20th century. Later, scientists began tracking surface temperatures with satellites and looking for clues about climate change in geologic records. We know this is true thanks to an overwhelming body of evidence that begins with temperature measurements taken at weather stations and on ships starting in the mid-1800s. Ever since, human activities have been heating the planet. However, during the Industrial Revolution, people started burning coal and other fossil fuels to power factories, smelters and steam engines, which added more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This greenhouse effect is important: It’s why a planet so far from the sun has liquid water and life! These gases make up just a small fraction of the atmosphere but exert outsized control on Earth’s climate by trapping some of the planet’s heat before it escapes into space. For more than a century, scientists have understood the basic physics behind why greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide cause warming. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |