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Climate Change

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7 Powerful Lessons for Teaching Students About Global Warming. A Student's Guide to Global Climate Change. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power trailer: climate change has new villain – video. Climate Action project. NASA: Climate Change and Global Warming. Climate change. Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Evidence. › en español 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 11,700 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 extremely likely (greater than 95% probability) to be the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia.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. Global Temperature Rise. The Earth Institute - Columbia University. Eco Schools. FutureCamp. Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage': scientists despair at latest coral bleaching data.

Back-to-back severe bleaching events have affected two-thirds of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, new aerial surveys have found.

Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage': scientists despair at latest coral bleaching data

The findings have caused alarm among scientists, who say the proximity of the 2016 and 2017 bleaching events is unprecedented for the reef, and will give damaged coral little chance to recover. Scientists with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies last week completed aerial surveys of the world’s largest living structure, scoring bleaching at 800 individual coral reefs across 8,000km.

The results show the two consecutive mass bleaching events have affected a 1,500km stretch, leaving only the reef’s southern third unscathed. Where last year’s bleaching was concentrated in the reef’s northern third, the 2017 event spread further south, and was most intense in the middle section of the Great Barrier Reef. This year’s mass bleaching, second in severity only to 2016, has occurred even in the absence of an El Niño event. Global Warming: 2017 Articles, Facts, Causes & Effects. The Kids Guide To Global Warming. People are seeing change all over the world.

The Kids Guide To Global Warming

Arctic sea ice is melting earlier and forming later. Glaciers are disappearing. Heat waves, storms and floods are becoming more extreme. Insects are emerging sooner and flowers are blooming earlier. In some places, birds are laying eggs before they’re expected and bears have stopped hibernating. So what’s going on? A Natural Greenhouse Earth is the only planet we know of that can support life. Sandbag: Defending against climate risk. Slims River: Climate change causes 'river piracy' in Canada's Yukon. Image copyright Dan Shugar/University of Washington Tacoma A team of scientists say a melting glacier in Canada's Yukon has caused a river to completely change course.

Slims River: Climate change causes 'river piracy' in Canada's Yukon

Their findings, published in Nature Geoscience, show how climate change can cause surprising geological events. The Slims River once flowed out to the Bering Sea, but now it flows into the Kaskawulsh River instead. This phenomenon, known as "river piracy", typically takes centuries but the study documented it over the course of one spring. "Nobody's ever seen a river piracy occur in modern times, at least to my knowledge," lead author Dan Shugar told the BBC. The geoscientist at the University of Washington Tacoma says he and six researchers from Canadian and American universities had planned to study the Slims River last summer.

But when they arrived in the Yukon it was barely flowing. Image copyright Jim Best/University of Illinois The event is known as river piracy or stream capture, and can take thousands of years. Facing the Future. Why the Arctic is climate change's canary in the coal mine - William Chapman. Albedo in Latin means “white,” and is a measure of how much solar energy is reflected back into space from a surface.

Why the Arctic is climate change's canary in the coal mine - William Chapman

Why is this so important in regard to climate change in the Arctic? Visit this site and find out! The National Snow and Ice Data Center has lots more information about albedo, sea ice, and the thermodynamics involved in the growth and melting of sea ice. For the current and historical state of Arctic sea ice, visit The Cryosphere Today. Looking for satellite observations of Arctic change discussed in the lesson? Still a bit confused about positive and negative feedbacks? Sea ice is melting, should we be concerned about the impact of its loss? Are you full of questions about the possible impact of all these changes in the Arctic? What do recycling, checking your tire pressure and changing to compact fluorescent light bulbs all have in common? There are many more TED-Ed Lessons on climate change.