Portal:Climate change

The Climate Change Portal

Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The modern-day rise in global temperatures is driven by human activities, especially fossil fuel (coal, oil and natural gas) burning since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices release greenhouse gases. These gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight, warming the lower atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere now has roughly 50% more carbon dioxide, the main gas driving global warming, than it did at the end of the pre-industrial era, reaching levels not seen for millions of years.

Climate change has an increasingly large impact on the environment. Deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Amplified warming in the Arctic has contributed to thawing permafrost, retreat of glaciers and sea ice decline. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other weather extremes. Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct. Even if efforts to minimize future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. These include ocean heating, ocean acidification and sea level rise.

Climate change threatens people with increased flooding, extreme heat, increased food and water scarcity, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. The World Health Organization calls climate change one of the biggest threats to global health in the 21st century. Societies and ecosystems will experience more severe risks without action to limit warming. Adapting to climate change through efforts like flood control measures or drought-resistant crops partially reduces climate change risks, although some limits to adaptation have already been reached. Poorer communities are responsible for a small share of global emissions, yet have the least ability to adapt and are most vulnerable to climate change.

Many climate change impacts have been observed in the first decades of the 21st century, with 2024 the warmest on record at +1.60 °C (2.88 °F) since regular tracking began in 1850. Additional warming will increase these impacts and can trigger tipping points, such as melting all of the Greenland ice sheet. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 °C". However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.8 °C (5.0 °F) by the end of the century.

There is widespread support for climate action worldwide, and most countries aim to stop emitting carbon dioxide. Fossil fuels can be phased out by stopping subsidising them, conserving energy and switching to energy sources that do not produce significant carbon pollution. These energy sources include wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power. Cleanly generated electricity can replace fossil fuels for powering transportation, heating buildings, and running industrial processes. Carbon can also be removed from the atmosphere, for instance by increasing forest cover and farming with methods that store carbon in soil. (Full article...)

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A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions from producing goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the hidden social costs of carbon emissions. They are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by essentially increasing the price of fossil fuels. This both decreases demand for goods and services that produce high emissions and incentivizes making them less carbon-intensive. When a fossil fuel such as coal, petroleum, or natural gas is burned, most or all of its carbon is converted to CO₂. Greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change. This negative externality can be reduced by taxing carbon content at any point in the product cycle.

A carbon tax as well as carbon emission trading is used within the carbon price concept. Two common economic alternatives to carbon taxes are tradable permits with carbon credits and subsidies. In its simplest form, a carbon tax covers only CO₂ emissions. It could also cover other greenhouse gases, such as methane or nitrous oxide, by taxing such emissions based on their CO₂-equivalent global warming potential. Research shows that carbon taxes do often reduce emissions. Many economists argue that carbon taxes are the most efficient (lowest cost) way to tackle climate change. As of 2019, carbon taxes have either been implemented or are scheduled for implementation in 25 countries. 46 countries have put some form of price on carbon, either through carbon taxes or carbon emission trading schemes.

Some experts observe that a carbon tax can negatively affect public welfare, tending to hit low- and middle-income households the hardest and making their necessities more expensive (for instance, the tax might drive up prices for, say, petrol and electricity). Alternatively, the tax can be too conservative, making "comparatively small dents in overall emissions". To make carbon taxes fairer, policymakers can try to redistribute the revenue generated from carbon taxes to low-income groups by various fiscal means. Such a policy initiative becomes a carbon fee and dividend, rather than a plain tax. (Full article...)

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Sea ice

Credit: NASA

This image shows the Arctic as observed by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on September 16, 2007. The image denotes a record sea ice minimum in the Arctic.

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In the news

From the Wikinews Climate change category

Additional News

Monsoons in India become more erratic.
Climate modellers Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann win Nobel Prize.

Selected biography –

Kurum in 2023

Murat Kurum is the minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change in Turkey, and president of the 2026 United Nations Climate Change Conference. (Full article...)

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General images

The following are images from various climate-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Joseph Fourier (from History of climate change science)
Image 2CO₂ concentrations over the last 500 million years (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 3Correspondence between temperature and atmospheric CO₂ during the last 800,000 years (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 4Concentration of atmospheric CO₂ over the last 40,000 years, from the Last Glacial Maximum to the present day. The current rate of increase is much higher than at any point during the last deglaciation. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 5Solar irradiance (yellow) plotted with temperature (red) since 1880. (from History of climate change science)
Image 6The US, China and Russia have cumulatively contributed the greatest amounts of CO₂ since 1850. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 7Observed temperature from NASA vs the 1850–1900 average used by the IPCC as a pre-industrial baseline. The primary driver for increased global temperatures in the industrial era is human activity, with natural forces adding variability. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 8Schematic drawing of Earth's excess heat inventory and energy imbalance for two recent time periods (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 9Physical drivers of global warming that has happened so far. Future global warming potential for long lived drivers like carbon dioxide emissions is not represented. Whiskers on each bar show the possible error range. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 10This diagram of the carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans in billions of metric tons of carbon per year. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, red are human contributions, white are stored carbon. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 11The Keeling Curve shows the long-term increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations since 1958. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 12Milutin Milanković (from History of climate change science)
Image 13The rate of global tree cover loss has approximately doubled since 2001, to an annual loss approaching an area the size of Italy. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 14Scientific consensus on causation: Academic studies of scientific agreement on human-caused global warming among climate experts (2010–2015) reflect that the level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science.
A 2019 study found scientific consensus to be at 100%, and a 2021 study concluded that consensus exceeded 99%. Another 2021 study found that 98.7% of climate experts indicated that the Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity. (from History of climate change science)
Image 15Carbon dioxide observations from 2008 to 2017 showing the seasonal variations and the difference between northern and southern hemispheres (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 16Earth's energy imbalance has increased in the 21st century, reaching values twice that of prior estimates from the IPCC. The ability to observe this imbalance is deteriorating because satellites are being decommissioned. (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 17The Fourth National Climate Assessment ("NCA4", USGCRP, 2017) includes charts illustrating that neither solar nor volcanic activity can explain the observed warming. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 18Terms like "climate emergency" and climate crisis" have often been used by activists, and are increasingly found in academic papers. (from History of climate change science)
Image 19Extreme event attribution methods generally involve applying climate change models to scenarios in both the "real" world that is experiencing global warming, and a simulated world that does not suffer the drivers of global warming. Differences between the results of the two processes—especially the frequency, intensity and impacts of extreme weather events—are then analyzed to arrive at the attribution result. (from History of climate change science)
Image 20Over 400,000 years of ice core data: Graph of CO₂ (green), reconstructed temperature (blue) and dust (red) from the Vostok ice core (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 21Since the 1980s, global average surface temperatures during a given decade have almost always been higher than the average temperature in the preceding decade. (from History of climate change science)
Image 22Meat from cattle and sheep have the highest emissions intensity of any agricultural commodity. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 23Top panel: Observed global average temperature change (1870— ).Bottom panel: Data from the Fourth National Climate Assessment is merged for display on the same scale to emphasize relative strengths of forces affecting temperature change. Human-caused forces have increasingly dominated.
(from Causes of climate change)
Image 24Greenhouse gases allow sunlight to pass through the atmosphere, heating the planet, but then absorb and redirect the infrared radiation (heat) the planet emits. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 25Air pollution has substantially increased the presence of aerosols in the atmosphere when compared to the preindustrial background levels. Different types of particles have different effects, but overall, cooling from aerosols formed by sulfur dioxide emissions has the overwhelming impact. However, the complexity of aerosol interactions in atmospheric layers makes the exact strength of cooling very difficult to estimate. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 26Increase in the Earth's non-cloud greenhouse effect (2000–2022) based on satellite data (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 27Eunice Newton Foote recognized carbon dioxide's heat-capturing effect in 1856, appreciating its implications for the planet. (from History of climate change science)
Image 28Mean temperature anomalies during the period 1965 to 1975 with respect to the average temperatures from 1937 to 1946. This dataset was not available at the time. (from History of climate change science)
Image 29Annual CO₂ flows from anthropogenic sources (left) into Earth's atmosphere, land, and ocean sinks (right) since year 1960. Units in equivalent gigatonnes carbon per year. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 30The Global Carbon Project shows how additions to CO₂ since 1880 have been caused by different sources ramping up one after another. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 31CO₂ sources and sinks since 1880. While there is little debate that excess carbon dioxide in the industrial era has mostly come from burning fossil fuels, the future strength of land and ocean carbon sinks is an area of study. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 32James Hansen during his 1988 testimony to Congress, which alerted the public to the dangers of global warming (from History of climate change science)
Image 33Main sources of global methane emissions (2008–2017) according to the Global Carbon Project (from Causes of climate change)
Image 34The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been increasing in progressively greater amounts. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 35Charles Keeling, receiving the National Medal of Science from George W. Bush, in 2001 (from History of climate change science)
Image 36A Sankey diagram illustrating a balanced example of Earth's energy budget. Line thickness is linearly proportional to relative amount of energy. (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 37Atmospheric CO₂ concentration measured at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii from 1958 to 2023 (also called the Keeling Curve). The rise in CO₂ over that time period is clearly visible. The concentration is expressed as μmole per mole, or ppm. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 38Earth's energy budget (in W/m²) determines the climate. It is the balance of incoming and outgoing radiation and can be measured by satellites. The Earth's energy imbalance is the "net absorbed" energy amount. (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 39Exterior of a Stevenson screen used for temperature measurements on land stations. (from History of climate change science)
Image 40Energy flows between space, the atmosphere, and Earth's surface. Rising greenhouse gas levels are contributing to an energy imbalance. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 41A diagram which shows where the extra heat retained on Earth due to the energy imbalance is going.
Image 42James Croll (from History of climate change science)
Image 43Cumulative land-use change contributions to CO₂ emissions, by region. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 44John Tyndall's ratio spectrophotometer (drawing from 1861) measured how much infrared radiation was absorbed and emitted by various gases filling its central tube. Such measurements furthered understanding of the greenhouse effect that underlies global warming and climate change. (from History of climate change science)
Image 45Earth's energy balance and imbalance, showing where the excess energy goes: Outgoing radiation is decreasing owing to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to Earth's energy imbalance of about 460 TW. The percentage going into each domain of the climate system is also indicated. (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 46Modeled simulation of the effect of various factors (including GHGs, Solar irradiance) singly and in combination, showing in particular that solar activity produces a small and nearly uniform warming, unlike what is observed. (from History of climate change science)
Image 47Between 1850 and 2019 the Global Carbon Project estimates that about 2/3rds of excess carbon dioxide emissions have been caused by burning fossil fuels, and a little less than half of that has stayed in the atmosphere. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 48The growth in Earth's energy imbalance from satellite and in situ measurements (2005–2019). A rate of +1.0 W/m² summed over the planet's surface equates to a continuous heat uptake of about 500 terawatts (~0.3% of the incident solar radiation). (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 49Human fingerprints for global warming (summary of observational evidence that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing the climate to warm). (from Causes of climate change)
Image 50CO₂ reduces the flux of thermal radiation emitted to space (causing the large dip near 667 cm⁻¹), thereby contributing to the greenhouse effect. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 51Air-sea exchange of CO₂ (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 52Anthropogenic global warming—not global cooling or "imminent ice ages"—dominated peer-reviewed literature in the 1970s, contrary to false claims that climate science subsequently reversed its consensus. (from History of climate change science)
Image 53CO₂ concentrations over the last 800,000 years as measured from ice cores (blue/green) and directly (black) (from Causes of climate change)
Image 54Sea ice reflects 50% to 70% of incoming sunlight, while the ocean, being darker, reflects only 6%. As an area of sea ice melts and exposes more ocean, more heat is absorbed by the ocean, raising temperatures that melt still more ice. This is a positive feedback process. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 55The impact of the greenhouse effect on climate was presented to the public early in the 20th century, as succinctly described in this 1912 Popular Mechanics article. (from History of climate change science)
Image 56Global average temperatures show that the Medieval Warm Period was not a planet-wide phenomenon, and that the Little Ice Age was not a distinct planet-wide time period but rather the end of a long temperature decline that preceded recent global warming. (from Temperature record of the last 2,000 years)
Image 57Brown bars indicate drivers that increase global warming, and blue bars indicate those that decrease global warming. Future global warming potential for long lived drivers like carbon dioxide emissions is not represented. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 58Longwave-infrared absorption coefficients of water vapor and carbon dioxide. For wavelengths near 15-microns, CO₂ is a much stronger absorber than water vapor. (from Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Earth)
Image 59Warming influence of atmospheric greenhouse gases has nearly doubled since 1979, with carbon dioxide and methane being the dominant drivers. (from Causes of climate change)
Image 60The rising accumulation of energy in the oceanic, land, ice, and atmospheric components of Earth's climate system since 1960 (from Earth's energy budget)
Image 61Erratics, boulders deposited by glaciers far from any existing glaciers, led geologists to the conclusion that climate had changed in the past. (from History of climate change science)
Image 62Earth heating estimates from a combination of space altimetry and space gravimetry (from Earth's energy budget)

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Sea level

Credit: NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry

Sea level trends between 1993 and 2010. Per the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "The following maps provide estimates of sea level rise based on measurements from satellite radar altimeters. The local trends were estimated using data from TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), Jason-1, and Jason-2, which have monitored the same ground track since 1992. An inverted barometer has been applied. The estimates of sea level rise do not include glacial isostatic adjustment effects on the geoid, which are modeled to be +0.2 to +0.5 mm/year when globally averaged."