Earth warming to climate tipping point, warns study. Image copyright AP A warmer world will release vast volumes of carbon into the atmosphere, potentially triggering dangerous climate change, scientists warn. Writing in journal Nature, they project that an increase of 1C (1.8F) will release an additional 55 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere by 2050. This could trigger a "positive feedback" and push the planet's climate system past the point of no-return. Previous assessments have not taken carbon released by soil into account. In their Nature paper, an international team of scientists said that the majority of the Earth's terrestrial store of carbon was in the soil. They warned that as the world warmed, organisms living in the planet's soils would become more active, resulting in more carbon being released into the atmosphere - exacerbating warming.
"Using this approach we can get a robust idea of the whole picture. "It is very similar to the way we respire and produce carbon dioxide. Login. What is climate change? Media playback is unsupported on your device BBC News looks at what we know and don't know about the Earth's changing climate. What is climate change? The planet's climate has constantly been changing over geological time. The global average temperature today is about 15C, though geological evidence suggests it has been much higher and lower in the past. However, the current period of warming is occurring more rapidly than many past events. What is the "greenhouse effect"? The greenhouse effect refers to the way the Earth's atmosphere traps some of the energy from the Sun.
The energy that radiates back down to the planet heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface. Scientists believe we are adding to the natural greenhouse effect with gases released from industry and agriculture (known as emissions), trapping more energy and increasing the temperature. Most man-made emissions of CO2 are through the burning of fossil fuels, as well as through cutting down carbon-absorbing forests.
2016 'very likely' to be world's warmest year. Image copyright Getty Images 2016 looks poised to be the warmest year on record globally, according to preliminary data. With data from just the first nine months, scientists are 90% certain that 2016 will pass the mark set by 2015. Temperatures from January to September were 1.2C above pre-industrial levels, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The body says temperatures should remain high enough for the rest of the year to break the previous record. El Nino has had an impact, but the most significant factor driving temperatures up continues to be CO2 emissions.
What is climate change? The provisional statement on the status of the global climate in 2016 has been released early this year to help inform negotiators meeting in Morocco, who are trying to push forward with the Paris Climate Agreement. The document says the year to September was 0.88 above the average for the period between 1961-90, which the WMO uses at its baseline.
Image copyright WMO "Another year. Global sea levels are rising fast, so where does that leave the cities most at risk? | Cities. Current projections of global average sea level rise are now expected to double by 2100, which would be severely damaging – if not disastrous – for many of the world’s coastal cities, from Ho Chi Minh City and Mumbai to New Orleans and Miami. Yet the upcoming United Nations conference on sustainable urban development, Habitat III, is unlikely to create the international platform needed to tackle such a global threat, according to Dan Lewis, head of UN Habitat’s urban risk reduction unit. “The communication of risk is something that most UN member states are not prepared to openly discuss, unless they happen to be Tuvalu or the Maldives or other South Pacific or Caribbean islands,” Lewis told the Guardian. “Massive [climate-induced] displacement is a big problem that a lot of member states have dressed up as other kinds of issues.
But when it comes to the real nuts and bolts of ‘how do you accommodate 100,000 people from Kiribati in the next decade or so?’ Ethiopia May Paradoxically Benefit From Climate Change. Suffering from corruption, poor sanitation, malnutrition, and enormous economic inequality, Ethiopia is a troubled nation to say the least. However, a new study reveals that it may be getting a welcome boost from a most unlikely source – climate change. Writing in the journal Climatic Change, a team from Virginia Tech (VT) has concluded that the flow of water to the Ethiopian Blue Nile Basin (BNB) will likely increase as the world inexorably warms. This will allow crops to be grown throughout multiple seasons of the year, potentially rescuing its faltering agricultural sector. “For all the catastrophic impacts of climate change, there are some silver linings,” coordinating researcher Zach Easton, an associate professor of biological systems engineering at VT, said in a statement.
The team’s cutting-edge hydrogeological models, based on calculations developed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), assume that the world will continue to warm fairly rapidly. Climate change explained in six graphics. Climate change: 'Monumental' deal to cut HFCs, fastest growing greenhouse gases. More than 150 countries have reached a deal described as "monumental" to phase out gases that are making global warming worse. Hydroflurocarbons (HFCs) are widely used in fridges, air conditioning and aerosol sprays. Delegates meeting in Rwanda accepted a complex amendment to the Montreal Protocol that will see richer countries cut back their HFC use from 2019.
But some critics say the compromise may have less impact than expected. Three-way deal US Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped forge the deal in a series of meetings in the Rwandan capital, said it was a major victory for the Earth. "It's a monumental step forward, that addresses the needs of individual nations but it will give us the opportunity to reduce the warming of the planet by an entire half a degree centigrade," he told BBC News. What is climate change? The new agreement will see three separate pathways for different countries. India, will start even later, making its first 10% cut in use in 2032. Buying time. Global sea levels are rising fast, so where does that leave the cities most at risk? | Cities.
Lives in the balance: climate change and the Marshall Islands | Environment. Watch the full video7 minutes There may be music in the roar of the sea, as Byron eulogized, but the waves can also bring creeping unease. On low-lying fragments of land like the Marshall Islands, the tides are threatening to take away what they previously helped support: life. Hilda Heine surveys the latest temporary sea wall that cleaves her property from the waves.
It has been knocked down twice since February by floods and she frets about her plants that will probably face a salty demise. Her vista would, sadly, be unremarkable in the Marshall Islands were it not for the policeman languidly guarding the corrugated metal wall – Heine is the president of the Pacific island nation. Here, no one is spared the rising seas. “I need a better wall, one with rocks,” Heine mutters. “The numbers are increasing, of people leaving,” Heine says. There is one destination at the top of the list for departing Marshallese: the USA. As the seas rise, the pathway to the US could be closing. Climate Time Machine. Ice loss labelled as 'extreme' 10 years ago is now considered commonplace. In March, the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas recorded a low maximum extent, with rapid ice loss continuing through May.
While this rate of ice loss would have been considered extreme 10 years ago, Nasa now says it's 'kind of used to these low levels of sea ice’ and it should be considered the 'new normal.' The space agency is now preparing a new method to measure the thickness of sea ice, in the hopes of better understanding the changes in the Arctic. Scroll down for video Despite the rapidly declining ice thickness levels, Nasa is not concerned, stating that it's 'kind of used to these levels of sea ice.' While this year’s ice melt was rapid through May, it slowed down in June, which Nasa says suggests that it is unlikely that this year’s summertime sea ice melt will set a new record.
Dr Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at Nasa, said: ‘Even when it’s likely that we won’t have a record low, the sea ice is not showing any kind of recovery. Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% MinimizeExpandClose. World's hottest month shows challenges global warming will bring | Environment. In Siberia, melting permafrost released anthrax that had been frozen in a reindeer carcass for decades, starting a deadly outbreak. In Baghdad, soaring temperatures forced the government to shut down for days at a time. In Kuwait, thermometers hit a record 54C (129F). July was the hottest month the world has endured since records began in 1880, scientists have said, and brought a painful taste of the troubles people around the world may have to grapple with as global warming intensifies.
Results compiled by Nasa showed the month was 0.84C hotter than the 1951-1980 average for July, and 0.11C hotter than the previous record set in July 2015. The temperature increase last month was not all due to climate change. Part of the increase came from the tail end of the El Niño phenomenon, which spreads warm water across the Pacific, giving a boost to global temperatures. However, it is well below the record set in 2006, the hottest UK month on record, when the average temperature was 17.8C.
Home : Volcanoes and Climate. Scientists warn world will miss key climate target | Science. Leading climate scientists have warned that the Earth is perilously close to breaking through a 1.5C upper limit for global warming, only eight months after the target was set. The decision to try to limit warming to 1.5C, measured in relation to pre-industrial temperatures, was the headline outcome of the Paris climate negotiations last December. The talks were hailed as a major success by scientists and campaigners, who claimed that, by setting the target, desertification, heatwaves, widespread flooding and other global warming impacts could be avoided.
However, figures – based on Met Office data – prepared by meteorologist Ed Hawkins of Reading University show that average global temperatures were already more than 1C above pre-industrial levels for every month except one over the past year and peaked at +1.38C in February and March. Keeping within the 1.5C limit will be extremely difficult, say scientists, given these rises. But what form that technology takes is unclear. The climate crisis is already here – but no one’s telling us | George Monbiot | Opinion. What is salient is not important. What is important is not salient. The media turns us away from the issues that will determine the course of our lives, and towards topics of brain-melting irrelevance. This, on current trends, will be the hottest year ever measured. The previous record was set in 2015; the one before in 2014. Fifteen of the 16 warmest years have occurred in the 21st century. Arctic sea ice covered a smaller area last winter than in any winter since records began.
Throughout the media, these tragedies are reported as impacts of El Niño: a natural weather oscillation caused by blocks of warm water forming in the Pacific. Eight months ago in Paris, 177 nations promised to try to ensure the world’s average temperature did not rise by more than 1.5C above the pre-industrial level. There are some crashing contradictions in the platform.
Donald Trump, on the other hand – well, what did you expect? National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | U.S. Department of Commerce. Evidence. The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives. Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal. The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.1 Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale.
The evidence for rapid climate change is compelling: Sea level rise Global temperature rise Warming oceans Glacial retreat. BBC NEWS. Climate guide. Find out about climate, climate change and climate science in our climate guide The following pages include information around what climate is and what influences it, how and why our climate is changing and the work we undertake to help the UK prepare for future changes.
If you would like to find out more about the climate services we provide, including Climate Service UK, you can do so on the climate services section of our website. For more in-depth information about climate research go to our research web pages. The Met Office also hosts the National Climate Information Centre which holds national and regional climate information for the United Kingdom. Digitised records for the whole country date back to 1910 and data for the Central England Temperature record dates back to 1654 - the world's longest instrumental record.
Climate Change on Flipboard. The Greenhouse Effect. Teachers TV- Climate Change - The Causes. Climate change. What causes climate change? Just as the world’s most respected scientific bodies have confirmed that the Earth is getting hotter, they have also stated that there is strong evidence that humans are driving the warming (2). Scientists agree the main cause of climate change is human activities which magnify the ‘greenhouse effect’ – a natural process in which gases in the atmosphere warm the Earth by trapping heat that is radiating towards space (2) (4).
A layer of greenhouse gases, including water vapour and smaller amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, act as a thermal blanket surrounding the Earth. This absorbs heat and warms the surface to a life-supporting average of 15°C. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas of concern. Warming caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases also increases the amount of water vapour in the air by boosting the rate of evaporation from the oceans and elsewhere. Fossil fuels. Global Climate Change Indicators: Introduction | National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) IntroductionWarming ClimateHuman InfluenceMore Information Introduction Many lines of scientific evidence show the Earth's climate is changing. This page presents the latest information from several independent measures of observed climate change that illustrate an overwhelmingly compelling story of a planet that is undergoing global warming.
It is worth noting that increasing global temperature is only one element of observed global climate change. Precipitation patterns are also changing; storms and other extremes are changing as well. How do we know the Earth's climate is warming? Thousands of land and ocean temperature measurements are recorded each day around the globe. The Global Surface Temperature is Rising Global annual average temperature measured over land and oceans. Global average temperature is one of the most-cited indicators of global climate change, and shows an increase of approximately 1.4°F since the early 20th Century. U.S. Sea Level is Rising Glacier Volume is Shrinking.
In Depth.