What is Global Warming?

Global Warming is defined as the increase of the average temperature on Earth. As the Earth is getting hotter, disasters like hurricanes, droughts, floods and unpredictable weather conditions and forest fires are getting more frequent.  

Experts believe is largely caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the last 100 years, the average Air temperature near the Earth’s surface has risen by a little less than 1 degree Celsius or 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Doesn't seem that much does it? Yet it is responsible for the conspicuous increase in storms, floods and raging forest fires we have seen in recent years, say scientists.

Their data show that an increase of one degree Celsius makes the Earth warmer now than it has been for at least a thousand years. The top 11 warmest years on record have all been in the last 13 years, said NASA in 2007, and the first half of 2010 has already gone down in history as the hottest ever recorded.

Projections from the UN climate change body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say that global surface temperature will probably rise a further 1.1 to 6.4  degrees Celsius (2.0 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) during the 21st century. The huge range of estimates is due to the amazing complexity of our Earth’s climate system and the uncertainty about whether mankind will fight this warming or continue with business-as-usual.

A certain degree of warming is unavoidable even if we managed to reduce our burden on the climate immediately. Oceans, for example, act as huge heat repositories that follow changes in air temperature with a time lag of decades or even hundreds of years. Melting ice caps reflect less sunlight than previously, so our planet absorbs more and more heat.

Exactly how these changes will influence the warming trend is unclear. All we know for certain is that it’s going to be warmer and not human friendly to live in.

Global warming causes climate change. 

Scientists often prefer to speak about climate change instead of global warming, because higher global temperatures don’t necessarily mean that it will be warmer at any given time at every location on Earth.

Warming is strongest at the Earth's Poles, the Arctic and the Antarctic, and will continue to be so. In recent years, fall air temperatures have been at a record 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) above normal in the Arctic, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But changing wind patterns could mean that a warming Arctic, for example, leads to colder winters in continental Europe. Regional climates will change as well, but in very different ways. Some regions like parts of Northern Europe or West Africa will probably get wetter, while other regions like the Mediterranean or Central Africa will most likely receive less rainfall

What will the Earth's climate be like at the end of this century?

Prediction is hard, especially about the future. What do you have to do to predict the climate of 2100? Well, you have to know how much Cabondioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, aerosols - that's dust and smoke - are going to be there, because that changes what we call the forcing - the pressures on the climate system - to be warmer or colder. We know it's going to be warmer. That's virtually certain.

But you don't know what those are going to be on the basis of any history. There's never been a time before when there was six to ten billion people on the Earth, when they're demanding dramatic increases in their standards of living, and when they're using the cheapest available technology - usually coal and oil burning, big cars - to get there. So, before you can forecast how warm it will be in 2100 - and whether it's worth a trillion-dollar investment not to have that outcome - you've got to know a bunch of social factors.

Impacts of global warming.

Climate has always presented a challenge to farmers, herders, fishermen and others whose livelihoods are closely linked to their environment.

The changing climate means that people in many areas no longer know what to plant, or when.

This has created Global problems of food access and affordability, food security, and the double burden of malnutrition.

Increasingly intense droughts, floods and hurricanes, are ruining lives and livelihoods around the world, from India to Indonesia, Pakistan, West Africa to the Caribbean.

Even Small Climate Changes Can Send Hundreds of wild life into Extinction

Well-designed land-use projects can help mitigate climate change while also delivering impressive biodiversity and local community benefits.

Successfully responding to climate change in the next decade is a challenge that will require nothing less than a revolution.

Responding effectively to climate change will require the participation every sector of the economy.

Africa faces more droughts and could have 25 per cent less water by the end of the century, scientists have warned. Rain shortages have already caused lots of problems in Africa, and climate scientists are trying to predict how global warming will change rainfall patterns across the continent.