make a presentation on the topic global warming

Global Warming

Miss Parson – Allerton Grange School

Aims and objectives

• To be able to define and understand the process of Global Warming.
• Be able to describe the effects of Global Warming on a global and local scale.
• Be able to recognise how the effects of Global Warming can be reduced.

What is�Global Warming ?

Global warming is the increase in the world’s average temperature, believed to be the result from the release of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

This increase in greenhouse gases is causing an increase in the rate of the greenhouse effect .

The Greenhouse�Effect

The earth is warming rather like the inside of a greenhouse. On a basic level the sun’s rays enter the earths atmosphere and are prevented from escaping by the greenhouse gases. This results in higher world temperatures.

In more detail………

Energy from the sun drives the earth's weather and climate, and heats the earth's surface; in turn, the earth radiates energy back into space. Atmospheric greenhouse gases (water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other gases) trap some of the outgoing energy, retaining heat somewhat like the glass panels of a greenhouse.�

Without this natural "greenhouse effect," temperatures would be much lower than they are now, and life as known today would not be possible. Instead, thanks to greenhouse gases, the earth's average temperature is a more hospitable 60°F. However, problems may arise when the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases increases. �

What are the�greenhouse gases?

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased nearly 30%, methane concentrations have more than doubled, and nitrous oxide concentrations have risen by about 15%. Why are greenhouse gas concentrations increasing?

Burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are the primary reason for the increased concentration of carbon dioxide.

CFC’s from aerosols, air conditioners, foam packaging and refrigerators most damaging (approx 6%).

Methane is released from decaying organic matter, waste dumps, animal dung, swamps and peat bogs (approx 19%).

Nitrous Oxide is emitted from car exhausts, power stations and agricultural fertiliser (approx 6%).

The major contributor is Carbon Dioxide (approx 64%).

Task 1:The �Greenhouse Effect

Complete your worksheet by cutting and labeling the diagram and answering the questions

Task 2 : Effects of global warming

You are about to see a series of pictures which show some of the effects of global warming.

Draw a rough sketch then write down the effects or titles for the pictures you've drawn

I’m thinking !

What are the consequences of Global Warming?

What are the pictures showing, what are the effects of global warming?

How did�you do?

Hurricanes –extreme weather

Flooding of coastal areas

Desertification

Ice caps melt

Rise in temperatures

Loss of wildlife habitats and species

Sea level rise

Extreme storms

There are also some positive effects of global warming

• Decrease in death and disease
• Healthier, faster growing forests due to excess CO2
• Longer growing seasons
• Warmer temperatures (UK Mediterranean climate!!)
• Plants and shrubs will be able to grow further north and in present desert conditions
• Heavier rainfall in certain locations will give higher agricultural production (Rice in India, Wheat in Africa).

How can Global Warming be reduced?

• Reduce the use of fossil fuels. A major impact would be to find alternatives to coal, oil and gas power stations.
• Afforest areas, trees use up the CO2, reduce deforestation.
• Reduce the reliance on the car (promote shared public transport).
• Try to use energy efficiently (turn off lights and not use as much!).
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
• Careful long term planning to reduce the impact of global warming.
• Global Warming is the increase in global temperatures due to the increased rate of the Greenhouse Effect.
• Greenhouse gases trap the incoming solar radiation, these gases include Carbon Dioxide, CFCs, Methane, Nitrous Oxides and other Halocarbons. These are released by human activity.
• We need the Greenhouse effect to maintain life on earth as we know it…however if we keep adding to the Greenhouse gases there will be many changes.
• Consequences can be negative ( ice caps melt, sea level rise, extreme weather conditions) or positive (more rain in drought areas, longer growing season).

Re do diagram slide 7

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2222523486/ - slide 1

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dzwjedziak/375723120/ - slide 8 and 1

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bratan/452189020/ - slide 4

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hogbard/412932972/- slide 6

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiger_empress/467671978/ - slide 8

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48135670@N00/97951579/ - slide 9,12

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60158441@N00/177929708/ - slide 9,12

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andzer/1480068258/ - slide 9,12

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickrussill/146743082/ - slide 9,12

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dasha/443747644/ - slide 10,13

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11371618@N00/469788104/ - slide 10,13

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2087879492/ - slide 10,13

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7471118@N02/432453250/ - slide 10,13

http://www.flickr.com/photos/madron/2595909135/ - slide 11

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chi-liu/491412087/ - slide 12,13

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabbriciuse/2073789872/ - slide 16

http://www.flickr.com/photos/algo/92463787/ - slide 16

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickwheeleroz/2295584401/ - slide 16

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andidfl/229169559/ - slide 16

Blog – Creative Presentations Ideas

infoDiagram visual slide examples, PowerPoint diagrams & icons , PPT tricks & guides

7 PowerPoint Templates for Impactful Climate Change Presentations

Last Updated on February 20, 2024 by Anastasia

If you’re planning to talk about ecology, circular economy, sustainability, or any climate change-related topics, using graphical aids can help you illustrate more data with less text and make your slides more dynamic and motivating. See how you can improve climate change presentations, whether you’re teaching, training, or inspiring your audience.

Visual illustrations can help clarify the message and ideas you want to convey. Using imagery to support rich data can help you take your environmental presentation to the next level and keep your listeners’ focus.

Check out this list of PowerPoint templates we put together. It can be a source of visual inspiration for your climate change presentations.

Transform your business presentations with our expert resources. Discover more on our business performance presentations webpage.

These seven decks will help you create high-quality presentations and illustrate various ecology and climate change-related topics:

• Actions against climate change
• Triple bottom line sustainable strategy
• Circular economy and sustainability
• Climate change impacts & business actions
• Plastic pollution & waste
• Ecology & green projects presentation
• Environmental and ecology icons

You can get any deck presented here as an editable file. Simply click on the images to see and download the source illustrations. Check the full collection of Climate & Ecology PowerPoint Templates here .

Actions Template Against Climate Change

Spreading knowledge and giving practical tips on what each of us can do to help slow down climate change and global warming is a very important part of combating this crisis.

If you want to explain the problems, go into the details. and show solution examples for a company, consumers, or employees, the climate change actions PPT deck is the one. It includes definitions, causes, and consequences of climate change, information on major sources of greenhouse emissions, practical action layouts, calendar and checklist slides, ESG principles, and many other diagrams.

You can use it to share knowledge, inspire, and motivate your community to be more conscious and effective in actions.

Check our blog to learn how visuals can help you drive climate change.

If you are an education professional or an NGO member, please contact us . We can give you a discount on our graphics or offer some of our presentations free of charge.

Triple Bottom Line Sustainable Business Strategy

The triple bottom line (TBL) is an accounting framework that incorporates three dimensions of business performance: social, environmental, and financial. Measuring business using TBL is one of the evaluation methodologies to verify how sustainable the business is, and how profitable it is.

The triple bottom line PowerPoint deck contains slides to illustrate the definition, metrics, quotes, and circular economy model. Also, you’ll find diagrams to show three areas of the TBL concept: Social Sustainability (People), Environmental Sustainability (Planet), and Economical Sustainability (Profit).

See how you can structure your TBL presentation and present various parts of it in this article . To learn more about accounting framework background, we recommend checking this Wikipedia article .

Circular Economy and Sustainability PPT Diagrams

The circular economy is a model of production & consumption. It involves sharing, reusing, repairing, and recycling materials and products for as long as possible. To present the essence of the circular economy and principles of the sustainable development model effectively, we encourage using visuals.

The circular economy PowerPoint template includes quotes slides, linear timelines, loop diagrams, comparison graphics, listings, processes, and layouts to show the difference between circular versus linear economies.

You can use these infographics in a broad spectrum of contexts to:

• Compare circular and linear economic models
• Show circular economy benefits
• Teach the green economy framework
• Design a lifecycle of a sustainable product
• Explain the 7R model principles with attractive graphics
• Create suggestive slides to emphasize the potential of a sustainable economy
• Give real-life examples of running a sustainable business

For more information about circular economy history and applications see this article .

If you’re talking about sustainability principles, types, or core pillars, see how icons can help translate abstract ideas into easy-to-read slides.

Climate Change Impacts & Business Actions Template

Explaining global warming effects or analyzing climate change risks? If you need to put together a general presentation on the climate change impacts and actions to be taken to combat it, have a look at the deck below.

Climate change impacts & business actions PPT deck contains diagrams for showing the impacts of global warming, facts, definitions, and quotes on climate from recognized institutions (UN, IPCC, NASA).

See simple design tips on improving your environmental presentation with visual examples.

Plastic Pollution & Waste PowerPoint Infographics

Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues. The rapidly increasing production of disposable plastic products influences the world’s ability to deal with them. The numbers are shocking: by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean.

You can use plastic pollution & waste slides collection to illustrate the effects of plastic pollution, statistics of pollution and global waste, pollution contributors, actions we can take to tackle it and reduce plastic in our daily lives, and ways to increase employee engagement in recycling.

Graphics will help make the heavy data more user-friendly and it will be easier for you to persuade the audience you’re presenting to that steps and actions toward a more sustainable economy need to be taken now.

Creative Eco & Green Projects Presentation Template

Pitching your new green technology idea to investors or presenting an eco-project? Get inspired by the following visualizations in green theme to help you to convey your ideas in an out-of-the-box format.

Such slides with organic blob shape designs are easily associated with a natural and environmental style and will give your presentation a personal touch. You can use these layouts to illustrate any part of your presentation, such as the agenda, project team, vision & mission statements, problem & green solution, project development & implementation timelines, solutions benefits, roadmap calendar, and many more.

Ecology Icons Bundle for PowerPoint

You don’t necessarily need very complex graphics to make your presentation or another document look more professional and modern-looking. Start small: add icons to highlight your points better.

Ecology icons PPT bundle contains various symbols for illustrating natural resources, sustainable transport & architecture, green energy, waste industry (types, treatment, and prevention), and ecosystems concepts.

See creative ways to use icons in slide design to make it easier for the reader to remember the content.

Why use strong visuals for climate change presentations

Adding graphics, even simple ones, will definitely make a difference in your presentation. Therefore it will help you convey your ideas better. This especially concerns climate change presentations, because you probably want to motivate people to take action and better-presented information will help you connect with them.

Having a set of easily editable templates can make your work easier. Pre-designed graphics will help you save time and focus on presentation content.

To ensure the professional look of your slides, check our articles from our designer’s advice about graphical consistency rules  and  aligning elements  properly.

Check our YouTube movie with examples of how you can illustrate climate change or global warming concepts:

Resources: PowerPoint Templates to Use for Climate Change Presentations

The slide examples mentioned above can help you provide environmental education content, prepare marketing material, and kickstart a positive change for a sustainable future.

Explore the set of presentation graphics on climate change, global warming, and other connected topics:

Environmental & Climate Change Presentation PPT Templates

To try out how those graphics work, get a sample of  free PPT diagrams and icons . You can use it to see if this kind of presentation visuals is a good fit for you.

• ENVIRONMENT

What is global warming, explained

The planet is heating up—and fast.

Glaciers are melting , sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying , and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It has become clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years .

We often call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. While many people think of global warming and climate change as synonyms , scientists use “climate change” when describing the complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems—in part because some areas actually get cooler in the short term .

Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also extreme weather events , shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising seas , and a range of other impacts. All of those changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely on.

What will we do—what can we do—to slow this human-caused warming? How will we cope with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the fate of the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms, and snow-capped mountains—hangs in the balance.

Understanding the greenhouse effect

The "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat . These gases let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the glass walls of a greenhouse, hence the name.

Sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where the energy is absorbed and then radiate back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, greenhouse gas molecules trap some of the heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases concentrate in the atmosphere, the more heat gets locked up in the molecules.

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Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, when Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere. This natural greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it, the Earth's surface would be an average of about 60 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) cooler.

A polar bear stands sentinel on Rudolf Island in Russia’s Franz Josef Land archipelago, where the perennial ice is melting.

In 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide , a greenhouse gas. He kicked off 100 years of climate research that has given us a sophisticated understanding of global warming.

Levels of greenhouse gases have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they had been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures had also stayed fairly constant over that time— until the past 150 years . Through the burning of fossil fuels and other activities that have emitted large amounts of greenhouse gases, particularly over the past few decades, humans are now enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth significantly, and in ways that promise many effects , scientists warn.

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How global warming is disrupting life on Earth

These breathtaking natural wonders no longer exist

What is the ozone layer, and why does it matter?

Aren't temperature changes natural.

Human activity isn't the only factor that affects Earth's climate. Volcanic eruptions and variations in solar radiation from sunspots, solar wind, and the Earth's position relative to the sun also play a role. So do large-scale weather patterns such as El Niño .

But climate models that scientists use to monitor Earth’s temperatures take those factors into account. Changes in solar radiation levels as well as minute particles suspended in the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions , for example, have contributed only about two percent to the recent warming effect. The balance comes from greenhouse gases and other human-caused factors, such as land use change .

The short timescale of this recent warming is singular as well. Volcanic eruptions , for example, emit particles that temporarily cool the Earth's surface. But their effect lasts just a few years. Events like El Niño also work on fairly short and predictable cycles. On the other hand, the types of global temperature fluctuations that have contributed to ice ages occur on a cycle of hundreds of thousands of years.

For thousands of years now, emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere have been balanced out by greenhouse gases that are naturally absorbed. As a result, greenhouse gas concentrations and temperatures have been fairly stable, which has allowed human civilization to flourish within a consistent climate.

Greenland is covered with a vast amount of ice—but the ice is melting four times faster than thought, suggesting that Greenland may be approaching a dangerous tipping point, with implications for global sea-level rise.

Now, humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the Industrial Revolution. Changes that have historically taken thousands of years are now happening over the course of decades .

Why does this matter?

The rapid rise in greenhouse gases is a problem because it’s changing the climate faster than some living things can adapt to. Also, a new and more unpredictable climate poses unique challenges to all life.

Historically, Earth's climate has regularly shifted between temperatures like those we see today and temperatures cold enough to cover much of North America and Europe with ice. The difference between average global temperatures today and during those ice ages is only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), and the swings have tended to happen slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years.

But with concentrations of greenhouse gases rising, Earth's remaining ice sheets such as Greenland and Antarctica are starting to melt too . That extra water could raise sea levels significantly, and quickly. By 2050, sea levels are predicted to rise between one and 2.3 feet as glaciers melt.

As the mercury rises, the climate can change in unexpected ways. In addition to sea levels rising, weather can become more extreme . This means more intense major storms, more rain followed by longer and drier droughts—a challenge for growing crops—changes in the ranges in which plants and animals can live, and loss of water supplies that have historically come from glaciers.

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Climate Matters • November 25, 2020

New Presentation: Our Changing Climate

Key concepts:.

Climate Central unveils Our Changing Climate —an informative and customizable climate change presentation that meteorologists, journalists, and others can use for educational outreach and/or a personal Climate 101 tool.

The presentation follows a ”Simple, Serious, Solvable” framework, inspired by climate scientist Scott Denning. This allows the presenter to comfortably explain, and the viewers to easily understand, the causes (Simple), impacts (Serious), and solutions (Solvable) of climate change. 

Our Changing Climate is a revamped version of our 2016 climate presentation, and includes the following updates and features:

Up-to-date graphics and topics

Local data and graphics

Fully editable slides (add, remove, customize)

Presenter notes, background information, and references for each slide

Supplementary and bonus slides

Download Outline (PDF, 110KB)

Download Full Presentation (PPT, 148MB)

Updated: April 2021

Climate Central is presenting a new outreach and education resource for meteorologists, journalists, and others—a climate change presentation, Our Changing Climate . This 55-slide presentation is a guide through the basics of climate change, outlining its causes, impacts, and solutions. This climate change overview is unique because it includes an array of local graphics from our ever-expanding media library. By providing these local angles, the presenter can demonstrate that climate change is not only happening at a global-scale, but in our backyards.

This presentation was designed to support your climate change storytelling, but can also double as a great Climate 101 tool for journalists or educators who want to understand climate change better. Every slide contains main points along with background information, so people that are interested can learn at their own pace or utilize graphics for their own content. 

In addition to those features, it follows the “Simple, Serious, Solvable” framework inspired by Scott Denning, a climate scientist and professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University (and a good friend of the program). These three S’s help create the presentation storyline and outline the causes (Simple), impacts (Serious), and solutions (Solvable) of climate change. 

Simple. It is simple—burning fossil fuels is heating up the Earth. This section outlines the well-understood science that goes back to the 1800s, presenting local and global evidence that our climate is warming due to human activities.

Serious. More extreme weather, rising sea levels, and increased health and economic risks—the consequences of climate change. In this section, well, we get serious. Climate change impacts are already being felt around the world, and they will continue to intensify until we cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

Solvable. With such a daunting crisis like climate change, it is easy to get wrapped up in the negative impacts. This section explains how we can curb climate change and lists the main pathways and solutions to achieving this goal. 

With the rollout of our new climate change presentation, we at Climate Central would value any feedback on this presentation. Feel free to reach out to us about how the presentation worked for you, how your audience reacted, or any ideas or topics you would like to see included. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS & SPECIAL THANKS

Climate Central would like to acknowledge Paul Gross at WDIV-TV in Detroit and the AMS Station Science Committee for the original version of the climate presentation, Climate Change Outreach Presentation , that was created in 2016. We would also like to give special thanks to Scott Denning, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and a member of our NSF advisory board, for allowing us to use this “Simple, Serious, Solvable” framework in this presentation resource.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Global warming.

The causes, effects, and complexities of global warming are important to understand so that we can fight for the health of our planet.

Earth Science, Climatology

Tennessee Power Plant

Ash spews from a coal-fueled power plant in New Johnsonville, Tennessee, United States.

Photograph by Emory Kristof/ National Geographic

Global warming is the long-term warming of the planet’s overall temperature. Though this warming trend has been going on for a long time, its pace has significantly increased in the last hundred years due to the burning of fossil fuels . As the human population has increased, so has the volume of fossil fuels burned. Fossil fuels include coal, oil, and natural gas, and burning them causes what is known as the “greenhouse effect” in Earth’s atmosphere.

The greenhouse effect is when the sun’s rays penetrate the atmosphere, but when that heat is reflected off the surface cannot escape back into space. Gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels prevent the heat from leaving the atmosphere. These greenhouse gasses are carbon dioxide , chlorofluorocarbons, water vapor , methane , and nitrous oxide . The excess heat in the atmosphere has caused the average global temperature to rise overtime, otherwise known as global warming.

Global warming has presented another issue called climate change. Sometimes these phrases are used interchangeably, however, they are different. Climate change refers to changes in weather patterns and growing seasons around the world. It also refers to sea level rise caused by the expansion of warmer seas and melting ice sheets and glaciers . Global warming causes climate change, which poses a serious threat to life on Earth in the forms of widespread flooding and extreme weather. Scientists continue to study global warming and its impact on Earth.

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Related Resources

Global Warming 101

Everything you wanted to know about our changing climate but were too afraid to ask.

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What is global warming?

What causes global warming, how is global warming linked to extreme weather, what are the other effects of global warming, where does the united states stand in terms of global-warming contributors, is the united states doing anything to prevent global warming, is global warming too big a problem for me to help tackle.

A: Since the Industrial Revolution, the global annual temperature has increased in total by a little more than 1 degree Celsius, or about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Between 1880—the year that accurate recordkeeping began—and 1980, it rose on average by 0.07 degrees Celsius (0.13 degrees Fahrenheit) every 10 years. Since 1981, however, the rate of increase has more than doubled: For the last 40 years, we’ve seen the global annual temperature rise by 0.18 degrees Celsius, or 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit, per decade.

The result? A planet that has never been hotter . Nine of the 10 warmest years since 1880 have occurred since 2005—and the 5 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2015. Climate change deniers have argued that there has been a “pause” or a “slowdown” in rising global temperatures, but numerous studies, including a 2018 paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters , have disproved this claim. The impacts of global warming are already harming people around the world.

Now climate scientists have concluded that we must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2040 if we are to avoid a future in which everyday life around the world is marked by its worst, most devastating effects: the extreme droughts, wildfires, floods, tropical storms, and other disasters that we refer to collectively as climate change . These effects are felt by all people in one way or another but are experienced most acutely by the underprivileged, the economically marginalized, and people of color, for whom climate change is often a key driver of poverty, displacement, hunger, and social unrest.

A: Global warming occurs when carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other air pollutants collect in the atmosphere and absorb sunlight and solar radiation that have bounced off the earth’s surface. Normally this radiation would escape into space, but these pollutants, which can last for years to centuries in the atmosphere, trap the heat and cause the planet to get hotter. These heat-trapping pollutants—specifically carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor, and synthetic fluorinated gases—are known as greenhouse gases, and their impact is called the greenhouse effect.

Though natural cycles and fluctuations have caused the earth’s climate to change several times over the last 800,000 years, our current era of global warming is directly attributable to human activity—specifically to our burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, gasoline, and natural gas, which results in the greenhouse effect. In the United States, the largest source of greenhouse gases is transportation (29 percent), followed closely by electricity production (28 percent) and industrial activity (22 percent). Learn about the natural and human causes of climate change .

Curbing dangerous climate change requires very deep cuts in emissions, as well as the use of alternatives to fossil fuels worldwide. The good news is that countries around the globe have formally committed—as part of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement —to lower their emissions by setting new standards and crafting new policies to meet or even exceed those standards. The not-so-good news is that we’re not working fast enough. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists tell us that we need to reduce global carbon emissions by as much as 40 percent by 2030. For that to happen, the global community must take immediate, concrete steps: to decarbonize electricity generation by equitably transitioning from fossil fuel–based production to renewable energy sources like wind and solar; to electrify our cars and trucks; and to maximize energy efficiency in our buildings, appliances, and industries.

A: Scientists agree that the earth’s rising temperatures are fueling longer and hotter heat waves , more frequent droughts , heavier rainfall , and more powerful hurricanes .

In 2015, for example, scientists concluded that a lengthy drought in California—the state’s worst water shortage in 1,200 years —had been intensified by 15 to 20 percent by global warming. They also said the odds of similar droughts happening in the future had roughly doubled over the past century. And in 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine announced that we can now confidently attribute some extreme weather events, like heat waves, droughts, and heavy precipitation, directly to climate change.

The earth’s ocean temperatures are getting warmer, too—which means that tropical storms can pick up more energy. In other words, global warming has the ability to turn a category 3 storm into a more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early 1980s, as has the number of storms that reach categories 4 and 5. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season included a record-breaking 30 tropical storms, 6 major hurricanes, and 13 hurricanes altogether. With increased intensity come increased damage and death. The United States saw an unprecedented 22 weather and climate disasters that caused at least a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 2020, but, according to NOAA, 2017 was the costliest on record and among the deadliest as well: Taken together, that year's tropical storms (including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria) caused nearly $300 billion in damage and led to more than 3,300 fatalities.

The impacts of global warming are being felt everywhere. Extreme heat waves have caused tens of thousands of deaths around the world in recent years. And in an alarming sign of events to come, Antarctica has lost nearly four trillion metric tons of ice since the 1990s. The rate of loss could speed up if we keep burning fossil fuels at our current pace, some experts say, causing sea levels to rise several meters in the next 50 to 150 years and wreaking havoc on coastal communities worldwide.

A: Each year scientists learn more about the consequences of global warming , and each year we also gain new evidence of its devastating impact on people and the planet. As the heat waves, droughts, and floods associated with climate change become more frequent and more intense, communities suffer and death tolls rise. If we’re unable to reduce our emissions, scientists believe that climate change could lead to the deaths of more than 250,000 people around the globe every year and force 100 million people into poverty by 2030.

Global warming is already taking a toll on the United States. And if we aren’t able to get a handle on our emissions, here’s just a smattering of what we can look forward to:

• Disappearing glaciers, early snowmelt, and severe droughts will cause more dramatic water shortages and continue to increase the risk of wildfires in the American West.
• Rising sea levels will lead to even more coastal flooding on the Eastern Seaboard, especially in Florida, and in other areas such as the Gulf of Mexico.
• Forests, farms, and cities will face troublesome new pests , heat waves, heavy downpours, and increased flooding . All of these can damage or destroy agriculture and fisheries.
• Disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and alpine meadows could drive many plant and animal species to extinction.
• Allergies, asthma, and infectious disease outbreaks will become more common due to increased growth of pollen-producing ragweed , higher levels of air pollution , and the spread of conditions favorable to pathogens and mosquitoes.

Though everyone is affected by climate change, not everyone is affected equally. Indigenous people, people of color, and the economically marginalized are typically hit the hardest. Inequities built into our housing , health care , and labor systems make these communities more vulnerable to the worst impacts of climate change—even though these same communities have done the least to contribute to it.

A: In recent years, China has taken the lead in global-warming pollution , producing about 26 percent of all CO2 emissions. The United States comes in second. Despite making up just 4 percent of the world’s population, our nation produces a sobering 13 percent of all global CO2 emissions—nearly as much as the European Union and India (third and fourth place) combined. And America is still number one, by far, in cumulative emissions over the past 150 years. As a top contributor to global warming, the United States has an obligation to help propel the world to a cleaner, safer, and more equitable future. Our responsibility matters to other countries, and it should matter to us, too.

A: We’ve started. But in order to avoid the worsening effects of climate change, we need to do a lot more—together with other countries—to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and transition to clean energy sources.

Under the administration of President Donald Trump (a man who falsely referred to global warming as a “hoax”), the United States withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, rolled back or eliminated dozens of clean air protections, and opened up federally managed lands, including culturally sacred national monuments, to fossil fuel development. Although President Biden has pledged to get the country back on track, years of inaction during and before the Trump administration—and our increased understanding of global warming’s serious impacts—mean we must accelerate our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite the lack of cooperation from the Trump administration, local and state governments made great strides during this period through efforts like the American Cities Climate Challenge and ongoing collaborations like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative . Meanwhile, industry and business leaders have been working with the public sector, creating and adopting new clean-energy technologies and increasing energy efficiency in buildings, appliances, and industrial processes. 

Today the American automotive industry is finding new ways to produce cars and trucks that are more fuel efficient and is committing itself to putting more and more zero-emission electric vehicles on the road. Developers, cities, and community advocates are coming together to make sure that new affordable housing is built with efficiency in mind , reducing energy consumption and lowering electric and heating bills for residents. And renewable energy continues to surge as the costs associated with its production and distribution keep falling. In 2020 renewable energy sources such as wind and solar provided more electricity than coal for the very first time in U.S. history.

President Biden has made action on global warming a high priority. On his first day in office, he recommitted the United States to the Paris Climate Agreement, sending the world community a strong signal that we were determined to join other nations in cutting our carbon pollution to support the shared goal of preventing the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. (Scientists say we must stay below a 2-degree increase to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.) And significantly, the president has assembled a climate team of experts and advocates who have been tasked with pursuing action both abroad and at home while furthering the cause of environmental justice and investing in nature-based solutions.

A: No! While we can’t win the fight without large-scale government action at the national level , we also can’t do it without the help of individuals who are willing to use their voices, hold government and industry leaders to account, and make changes in their daily habits.

Wondering how you can be a part of the fight against global warming? Reduce your own carbon footprint by taking a few easy steps: Make conserving energy a part of your daily routine and your decisions as a consumer. When you shop for new appliances like refrigerators, washers, and dryers, look for products with the government’s ENERGY STAR ® label; they meet a higher standard for energy efficiency than the minimum federal requirements. When you buy a car, look for one with the highest gas mileage and lowest emissions. You can also reduce your emissions by taking public transportation or carpooling when possible.

And while new federal and state standards are a step in the right direction, much more needs to be done. Voice your support of climate-friendly and climate change preparedness policies, and tell your representatives that equitably transitioning from dirty fossil fuels to clean power should be a top priority—because it’s vital to building healthy, more secure communities.

You don’t have to go it alone, either. Movements across the country are showing how climate action can build community , be led by those on the front lines of its impacts, and create a future that’s equitable and just for all .

This story was originally published on March 11, 2016 and has been updated with new information and links.

This NRDC.org story is available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these conditions: The writer(s) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the story was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the story cannot be edited (beyond simple things such as grammar); you can’t resell the story in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you can’t republish our material wholesale or automatically—you need to select stories individually; you can’t republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; you should drop us a note to let us know when you’ve used one of our stories.

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Simpler Presentations of Climate Change

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Science Leads the Future

Are We Entering The Golden Age Of Climate Modeling?

Alumni push universities forward on climate, indoor air pollution in the time of coronavirus, how an unlikely friendship upended permafrost myths, the alarming rise of predatory conferences, science leads the future, and the future is now.

Has this happened to you? You are presenting the latest research about climate change to a general audience, maybe at the town library, to a local journalist, or even in an introductory science class. After presenting the solid science about greenhouse gases, how they work, and how we are changing them, you conclude with “and this is what the models predict about our climate future…”

At that point, your audience may feel they are being asked to make a leap of faith. Having no idea how the models work or what they contain and leave out, this final and crucial step becomes to them a “trust me” moment. Trust me moments can be easy to deny.

This problem has not been made easier by a recent expansion in the number of models and the range of predictions presented in the literature. One recent study making this point is that of Hausfather et al. [2022], which presents the “hot model” problem: the fact that some of the newer models in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) model comparison yield predictions of global temperatures that are above the range presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The authors present a number of reasons for, and solutions to, the hot model problem.

Models are crucial in advancing any field of science. They represent a state-of-the-art summary of what the community understands about its subject. Differences among models highlight unknowns on which new research can be focused.

But Hausfather and colleagues make another point: As questions are answered and models evolve, they should also converge. That is, they should not only reproduce past measurements, but they should also begin to produce similar projections into the future. When that does not happen, it can make trust me moments even less convincing.

Are there simpler ways to make the major points about climate change, especially to general audiences, without relying on complex models?

We think there are.

Old Predictions That Still Hold True

In a recent article in Eos , Andrei Lapenis retells the story of Mikhail Budyko ’s 1972 predictions about global temperature and sea ice extent [ Budyko , 1972]. Lapenis notes that those predictions have proven to be remarkably accurate. This is a good example of effective, long-term predictions of climate change that are based on simple physical mechanisms that are relatively easy to explain.

There are many other examples that go back more than a century. These simpler formulations don’t attempt to capture the spatial or temporal detail of the full models, but their success at predicting the overall influence of rising carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) on global temperatures makes them a still-relevant, albeit mostly overlooked, resource in climate communication and even climate prediction.

One way to make use of this historical record is to present the relative consistency over time in estimates of equilibrium carbon sensitivity (ECS), the predicted change in mean global temperature expected from a doubling of atmospheric CO 2 . ECS can be presented in straightforward language, maybe even without the name and acronym, and is an understandable concept.

Estimates of ECS can be traced back for more than a century (Table 1), showing that the relationship between CO 2 in the atmosphere and Earth’s radiation and heat balance, as an expression of a simple and straightforward physical process, has been understood for a very long time. We can now measure that balance with precision [e.g., Loeb et al. , 2021], and measurements and modeling using improved technological expertise have all affirmed this scientific consistency.

Table 1. Selected Historical Estimates of Equilibrium Carbon Sensitivity (ECS)

Settled Science

Another approach for communicating with general audiences is to present an abbreviated history demonstrating that we have known the essentials of climate change for a very long time—that the basics are settled science.

The following list is a vastly oversimplified set of four milestones in the history of climate science that we have found to be effective. In a presentation setting, this four-step outline also provides a platform for a more detailed discussion if an audience wants to go there.

• 1850s: Eunice Foote observes that, when warmed by sunlight, a cylinder filled with CO 2 attained higher temperatures and cooled more slowly than one filled with ambient air, leading her to conclude that higher concentrations of CO 2 in the atmosphere should increase Earth’s surface temperature [ Foote , 1856]. While not identifying the greenhouse effect mechanism, this may be the first statement in the scientific literature linking CO 2 to global temperature. Three years later, John Tyndall separately develops a method for measuring the absorbance of infrared radiation and demonstrates that CO 2 is an effective absorber (acts as a greenhouse gas) [ Tyndall , 1859 ; 1861 ]. 
• 1908: Svante Arrhenius describes a nonlinear response to increased CO 2 based on a year of excruciating hand calculations actually performed in 1896 [ Arrhenius , 1896]. His value for ECS is 4°C (Table 1), and the nonlinear response has been summarized in a simple one-parameter model .
• 1958: Charles Keeling establishes an observatory on Mauna Loa in Hawaii. He begins to construct the “ Keeling curve ” based on measurements of atmospheric CO 2 concentration over time. It is amazing how few people in any audience will have seen this curve.
• Current: The GISS data set of global mean temperature from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies records the trajectory of change going back decades to centuries using both direct measurements and environmental proxies.

The last three of these steps can be combined graphically to show how well the simple relationship derived from Arrhenius ’s [1908] projections, driven by CO 2 data from the Keeling curve, predicts the modern trend in global average temperature (Figure 1). The average error in this prediction is only 0.081°C, or 8.1 hundredths of a degree.

A surprise to us was that this relationship can be made even more precise by adding the El Niño index (November–January (NDJ) from the previous year) as a second predictor. The status of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation ( ENSO ) system has been known to affect global mean temperature as well as regional weather patterns. With this second term added , the average error in the prediction drops to just over 0.06°C, or 6 one hundredths of a degree.

It is also possible to extend this simple analysis into the future using the same relationship and IPCC AR6 projections for CO 2 and “assessed warming” (results from four scenarios combined; Figure 2).

Although CO 2 is certainly not the only cause of increased warming, it provides a powerful index of the cumulative changes we are making to Earth’s climate system.

A presentation built around the consistency of equilibrium carbon sensitivity estimates does not deliver a complete understanding of the changes we are causing in the climate system, but the relatively simple, long-term historical perspective can be an effective way to tell the story.

In this regard, it is interesting that the “Summary for Policy Makers” [ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , 2021] from the most recent IPCC science report also includes a figure (Figure SPM.10, p. 28) that captures both measured past and predicted future global temperature change as a function of cumulative CO 2 emissions alone. Given that the fraction of emissions remaining in the atmosphere over time has been relatively constant, this is equivalent to the relationship with concentration presented here. That figure also presents the variation among the models in predicted future temperatures, which is much greater than the measurement errors in the GISS and Keeling data sets that underlie the relationship in Figure 1.

A presentation built around the consistency of ECS estimates and the four steps clearly does not deliver a complete understanding of the changes we are causing in the climate system, but the relatively simple, long-term historical perspective can be an effective way to tell the story of those changes.

Past Performance and Future Results

Projecting the simple model used in Figure 1 into the future (Figure 2) assumes that the same factors that have made CO 2 alone such a good index to climate change to date will remain in place. But we know there are processes at work in the world that could break this relationship.

For example, some sources now see the electrification of the economic system, including transportation, production, and space heating and cooling, as part of the path to a zero-carbon economy [e.g., Gates , 2021]. But there is one major economic sector in which energy production is not the dominant process for greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide is not the major greenhouse gas. That sector is agriculture.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated that agriculture currently accounts for about 10% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, with nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and methane (CH 4 ) being major contributors to that total. According to the EPA (Figure 3), agriculture contributes 79% of N 2 O emissions in the United States, largely from the production and application of fertilizers (agricultural soil management) as well as from manure management, and 36% of CH 4 emissions (enteric fermentation and manure management—one might add some of the landfill emissions to that total as well).

If we succeed in moving nonagricultural sectors of the economy toward a zero-carbon state, the relationship in Figures 1 and 2 will be broken. The rate of overall climate warming would be reduced significantly, but N 2 O and CH 4 would begin to play a more dominant role in driving continued greenhouse gas warming of the planet, and we will then need more complex models than the one used for Figures 1 and 2. But just how complex?

In his recent book Life Is Simple , biologist Johnjoe McFadden traces the influence across the centuries of William of Occam (~1287–1347) and Occam’s razor as a concept in the development of our physical understanding of everything from the cosmos to the subatomic structure of matter [ McFadden , 2021]. One simple statement of Occam’s razor is, Entities should not be multiplied without necessity.

This is a simple and powerful statement: Explain a set of measurements with as few parameters, or entities, as possible. But the definition of necessity can change when the goals of a model or presentation change. The simple model used in Figures 1 and 2 tells us nothing about tomorrow’s weather or the rate of sea level rise or the rate of glacial melt. But for as long as the relationship serves to capture the role of CO 2 as an accurate index of changes in mean global temperature, it can serve the goal of making plain to general audiences that there are solid, undeniable scientific reasons why climate change is happening.

Getting the Message Across

When and if the simple relationship derived from Arrhenius’s calculations does fail as an accurate index of changes in mean global temperature, it will still provide a useful platform for explaining what has happened and why.

If we move toward an electrified economy and toward zero-carbon sources of electricity, the simple relationship derived from Arrhenius’s calculations will no longer serve that function. But when and if it does fail, it will still provide a useful platform for explaining what has happened and why. Perhaps there will be another, slightly more complex model for predicting and explaining climate change that involves three gases.

No matter how our climate future evolves, simpler and more accessible presentations of climate change science will always rely on and begin with our current understanding of the climate system. Complex, detailed models will be central to predicting our climate future (Figure 2 here would not be possible without them), but we will be more effective communicators if we can discern how best to simplify that complexity when presenting the essentials of climate science to general audiences.

Arrhenius, S. (1896), On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon temperature of the ground, Philos. Mag. J. Sci. , Ser. 5 , 41 , 237–276, https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 .

Arrhenius, S. (1908), Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe , translated by H. Borns, 228 pp., Harper, New York.

Budyko, M. I. (1972), Man’s Impact on Climate [in Russian], Gidrometeoizdat, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Foote, E. (1856), Circumstances affecting the heat of the Sun’s rays,  Am. J. Sci. Arts ,  22 (66), 382–383,  ia800802.us.archive.org/4/items/mobot31753002152491/mobot31753002152491.pdf .

Gates, B. (2021), How to Avoid a Climate Disaster , 257 pp., Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

Hausfather, Z., et al. (2022), Climate simulations: Recognize the ‘hot model’ problem, Nature , 605 , 26–29, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01192-2 .

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2021), Summary for policymakers, in Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis—Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , edited by V. Masson-Delmotte et al., pp. 3–32, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K., and New York, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf .

Loeb, N. G., et al. (2021), Satellite and ocean data reveal marked increase in Earth’s heating rate, Geophys. Res. Lett. , 48 (13), e2021GL093047, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL093047 .

McFadden, J. (2021), Life Is Simple: How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe , 376 pp., Basic Books, New York.

Tyndall, J. (1859), Note on the transmission of radiant heat through gaseous bodies,  Proc. R. Soc. London ,  10 , 37–39,  https://www.jstor.org/stable/111604 . 

Tyndall, J. (1861), I. The Bakerian Lecture.—On the absorption and radiation of heat by gases and vapours, and on the physical connexion of radiation, absorption, and conduction, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London , 151 , https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1861.0001 .

Author Information

John Aber ( [email protected] ) and Scott V. Ollinger, Department of Natural Resources and the Environment and the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham

Update, 26 September 2022: This article has been updated to include the early contribution of Eunice Foote in the study of CO 2 and its effects on Earth’s climate.

Citation:  Aber, J., and S. V. Ollinger (2022), Simpler presentations of climate change,  Eos, 103, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EO220444 . Published on 13 September 2022.

Text © 2022. the authors.  cc by-nc-nd 3.0 except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited., features from agu journals, warming experiment explores consequences of diminished snow, forecasting earthquake ruptures from slow slip evolution, exploring alfvén waves across space—and disciplines.

The Causes of Climate Change

Human activities are driving the global warming trend observed since the mid-20th century.

• The greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.
• Five key greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapor.
• While the Sun has played a role in past climate changes, the evidence shows the current warming cannot be explained by the Sun.

Increasing Greenhouses Gases Are Warming the Planet

Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20 th century to the human expansion of the "greenhouse effect" 1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.

Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. About half the light energy reaching Earth's atmosphere passes through the air and clouds to the surface, where it is absorbed and radiated in the form of infrared heat. About 90% of this heat is then absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-radiated, slowing heat loss to space.

Four Major Gases That Contribute to the Greenhouse Effect

Carbon dioxide.

A vital component of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is released through natural processes (like volcanic eruptions) and through human activities, such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation.

Like many atmospheric gases, methane comes from both natural and human-caused sources. Methane comes from plant-matter breakdown in wetlands and is also released from landfills and rice farming. Livestock animals emit methane from their digestion and manure. Leaks from fossil fuel production and transportation are another major source of methane, and natural gas is 70% to 90% methane.

Nitrous Oxide

A potent greenhouse gas produced by farming practices, nitrous oxide is released during commercial and organic fertilizer production and use. Nitrous oxide also comes from burning fossil fuels and burning vegetation and has increased by 18% in the last 100 years.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)

These chemical compounds do not exist in nature – they are entirely of industrial origin. They were used as refrigerants, solvents (a substance that dissolves others), and spray can propellants.

FORCING:  Something acting upon Earth's climate that causes a change in how energy flows through it (such as long-lasting, heat-trapping gases - also known as greenhouse gases). These gases slow outgoing heat in the atmosphere and cause the planet to warm.

Another Gas That Contributes to the Greenhouse Effect:

Water vapor.

Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, but because the warming ocean increases the amount of it in our atmosphere, it is not a direct cause of climate change. Credit:  John Fowler  on  Unsplash

FEEDBACKS:  A process where something is either amplified or reduced as time goes on, such as water vapor increasing as Earth warms leading to even more warming.

Human Activity Is the Cause of Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations

Over the last century, burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). This increase happens because the coal or oil burning process combines carbon with oxygen in the air to make CO 2 . To a lesser extent, clearing of land for agriculture, industry, and other human activities has increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.

The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by nearly 50% since 1750 2 . This increase is due to human activities, because scientists can see a distinctive isotopic fingerprint in the atmosphere.

In its Sixth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of scientific experts from countries all over the world, concluded that it is unequivocal that the increase of CO 2 , methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere over the industrial era is the result of human activities and that human influence is the principal driver of many changes observed across the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere.

"Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact."

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The panel's AR6 Working Group I (WGI) Summary for Policymakers report is online at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/ .

Evidence Shows That Current Global Warming Cannot Be Explained by Solar Irradiance

Scientists use a metric called Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) to measure the changes in energy the Earth receives from the Sun. TSI incorporates the 11-year solar cycle and solar flares/storms from the Sun's surface.

Studies show that solar variability has played a role in past climate changes. For example, a decrease in solar activity coupled with increased volcanic activity helped trigger the Little Ice Age.

But several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the Sun:

• Since 1750, the average amount of energy from the Sun either remained constant or decreased slightly 3 .
• If a more active Sun caused the warming, scientists would expect warmer temperatures in all layers of the atmosphere. Instead, they have observed a cooling in the upper atmosphere and a warming at the surface and lower parts of the atmosphere. That's because greenhouse gases are slowing heat loss from the lower atmosphere.
• Climate models that include solar irradiance changes can’t reproduce the observed temperature trend over the past century or more without including a rise in greenhouse gases.

1. IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Summary for Policy Makers, Sections A, “ The Current State of the Climate ”

IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Technical Summary, Sections TS.1.2, TS.2.1 and TS.3.1

2. P. Friedlingstein, et al., 2022: “Global Carbon Budget 2022”, Earth System Science Data ( 11 Nov 2022): 4811–4900. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4811-2022

3. IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 2, Section 2.2.1, “ Solar and Orbital Forcing ” IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 7, Sections 7.3.4.4, 7.3.5.2, Figure 7.6, “ Solar ” M. Lockwood and W.T. Ball, Placing limits on long-term variations in quiet-Sun irradiance and their contribution to total solar irradiance and solar radiative forcing of climate,” Proceedings of the Royal Society A , 476, issue 2228 (24 June 2020): https://doi 10.1098/rspa.2020.0077

Header image credit: Pixabay/stevepb Four Major Gases image credit: Adobe Stock/Ilya Glovatskiy

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Science News

Climate change is changing how we keep time.

Melting ice sheets are slowing Earth's rotation speed, complicating global timekeeping

The rapidly accelerating melting of Earth’s polar ice sheets — including ice atop Greenland (shown here) — is slowing the planet’s spin, which affects global timekeeping.

KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images

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By Carolyn Gramling

March 27, 2024 at 1:34 pm

Climate change may be making it harder to know exactly what time it is.

The rapid melting of the ice sheets atop Greenland and Antarctica, as measured by satellite-based gravitational measurements, is shifting more mass toward Earth’s waistline. And that extra bulge is slowing the planet’s rotation , geophysicist Duncan Agnew reports online March 27 in Nature . That climate change–driven mass shift is throwing a new wrench into international timekeeping standards.

The internationally agreed-upon coordinated universal time, or UTC, is set by atomic clocks, but that time is regularly adjusted to match Earth’s actual spin. Earth’s rotation isn’t always smooth sailing — the speed of the planet’s spin changes depending on a variety of factors, including gravitational drag from the sun and the moon, changes to the rotation speed of Earth’s core, friction between ocean waters and the seafloor, and shifts in the planet’s distribution of mass around its surface. Even earthquakes can affect the spin: The magnitude 9.1 earthquake in Indonesia in 2004, for example, altered the land surface in such a way that it caused Earth to rotate a tiny bit faster, says Agnew, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.

But the impact of that quake is much smaller than that of the ice sheets’ melting — a point that Agnew says he finds particularly startling. Humankind “has done something that affects, measurably, the rotation rate of the entire Earth.”

The need for occasional tweaks to the synchronization of atomic clocks and Earth’s rotation gave birth in 1972 to the “leap second ,” an extra tick that international timekeepers agreed to add to UTC as needed ( SN: 1/19/24 ). Timekeepers have added 27 leap seconds to the clock since the idea was introduced.

Still, metrologists — measurement scientists — aren’t overly fond of this system. For one thing, it doesn’t happen on a regular schedule, but only whenever it seems to be needed. And financial markets and satellite navigation systems, which rely on precise timing, each have their own methodologies for incorporating a leap second. Those inconsistencies can, counterproductively, make it more challenging to have a universal time. So in 2022, an international consortium of metrologists voted to do away with leap seconds in favor of adding larger chunks of time, perhaps a minute, less frequently. The group resolved to settle those details at its next meeting, in 2026.

That may not come a second too soon. The slightly slower rotation has actually delayed the need for timekeeping adjustments by a few years, Agnew says — in fact, as a result of this change, the last time a leap second was required to be inserted was in 2016. At the moment, in fact, Earth’s rotation and atomic clocks are nearly in sync.

But that’s just a brief respite, Agnew’s calculations show. The biggest changes to Earth’s rotation right now are coming from its heart: slowing rotation of Earth’s core is actually speeding up the spin of the outer layers ( SN: 1/23/23 ). That slowdown will ultimately mean that timekeepers, under the current system, must begin removing leap seconds from the UTC, rather than inserting them, to keep things in sync.

That shift in strategy might have begun as soon as in 2026. But the study suggests that, thanks to climate change, global timekeepers now have an extra two or three years before they need to adjust, notes geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica of Harvard University. But no realistic projections of future melting can forestall the inevitable beyond 2030, Mitrovica adds: One way or another, the world is going to have to start losing time — or international timekeeping guidelines will need to change.

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From the nature index.

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