Climate change is one of the main concerns in contemporary global society. This subject is an issue of great contention, with different sides disagreeing on either if it is occurring or what its real cause is. One thing that is certain is that we live in a dynamic world subject to different influences, be they man-made or natural. This discussion presents a report by the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences that presents evidence and causes of climate change.
According to the joint report, carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases absorb heat from the earth’s surface. As such, the earth warms when the atmospheric concentration of these gases increases. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased by over 40% over the last century. This rise has been accompanied by an increase of about 1 0C (1.8 0F) in the global average surface temperature over the same period (The Royal Society & National Academy of Sciences, 2020). This increase has been followed by largescale increases in heatwave intensity and frequency, Arctic sea ice decline, sea level rises, a warming of the ocean, and many other effects. Most of this warming has occurred over the last fifty years, a period during which CO2 concentrations increased by almost twice.
I agree with the evidence presented by these two commissions. There is an intricate relationship between the different weather phenomena and a slight change in one causes a chain reaction through the whole ecosystem (Sisco, et al., 2017). Changes in global surface temperature cause an instability in the overall equation that has to be corrected (Holbrook, et al., 2019). A change of 10C is significant on a global scale, and the resultant changes in weather patterns are proof that climate change is occurring.
References
Holbrook, N. J., Scannell, H. A., Sen Gupta, A., Benthuysen, J. A., Feng, M., Oliver, E. C., Alexander, L. V., Burrows, M. T., Donat, M. G., Hobday, A. J., Moore, P. J., Perkins-Kirkpatrick, S. E., Smale, D. A., Straub. S C., & Wernberg, T. (2019). A global assessment of marine heatwaves and their drivers. Nature Communications, 10(1), 1-13.
Sisco, M. R., Bosetti, V., & Weber, E. U. (2017). When do extreme weather events generate attention to climate change? Climatic change, 143(1), 227-241.
The Royal Society, & National Academy of Sciences. (2020). Climate Change Evidence & Causes. Web.