factors influencing a change in the climate of the Earth
Earth surface has experienced warming and cooling before but not like this. Over the last century, the surface of the Earth has experienced extraordinary warming, which according to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCDC) it is unmatched. According to a report from NCDC, every year since 1977 has been warmer than the average temperature of the 20th century (NCDC, 2016). Most surprising, all these warm years have occurred between 2001 and 2016 with 2016 recording the warmest period. Eventually, any current farmer since the 20th will confirm that there has been an alteration of the natural patterns of climate.
Scientists have shown that several factors can influence a change in the climate of the Earth. Among the leading drivers of climate change is deforestation, which is a human factor that causes the clearing of millions of acres of forests every year. This can either be for wood harvesting, to clearing land for agricultural activities, ranching or to make way for residential and industrial areas (Longobardi, Montenegro, Beltrami & Eby, 2016). Forests act as reservoir for enormous amounts of carbon, which is a heat-trapping gas largely associated with average warming over the past few decades. A recent study showed that atmospheric CO2 rose by ∼99 ppm from 1880 (289.8 ppm) to 2010 (388.4 ppm) (Ekwurzel et al., 2017). Deforestation especially in the rainforests leads to a loss of the natural air-scrubbing function of trees. Another notable climate drivers is variations in the sun’s energy, sun flares and sun spots reaching the Earth. This is a natural cause which in the recent years has elicited debate among scientists with suggestion that sun causes less global warming compared to human activities. According to scientists a change in solar output has both direct and indirect effect on Earth’s climate. An article from Union of Concerned Scientists, satellites that have been monitoring the total solar irradiance since the 1970s show that show that the sun noticeably affects our climate over millions of years, but it is not the cause of recent warming (ucsusa, 2017).
Until recently, climate change discussion was an easy filler for any awkward silence. Nonetheless tragically for polite conversationalists everywhere, the climate is no longer mundane. Climate change has become a hot button issue? Climate change now represents the most serious existential crisis whose impact in a century or less, paints a picture of towns and cities that might no longer be habitable. This global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment with glaciers shrinking, lakes breaking up earlier, animals shifting, and trees flowering sooner.
One of the recent problem associated with climate change is natural greenhouse effect. This is a natural process that warms the surface of the Earth when the sun shines on earth surface and some of the energy is reflected back to the atmosphere (Cassia, Nocioni, Correa-Aragunde & Lamattina, 2018). The greenhouse gases, in the right proportion, hold trap heat radiating from Earth toward space. The problem manifests when there is too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such as Carbon dioxide and methane that trap too much energy as heat thus upsetting the Earth’s system that regulate climate. As a human being, there are so many choices I make in life that increase this global warming. For example, using a vehicles that uses fossil fuel leads to an increase in black carbon that causes global warming. Still clearing the forest to expand cultivation area for chemical intensive food production makes me a contributor to global warming.
In conclusion, before the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, climate change could be explained by natural causes such as volcanic eruptions and solar energy. However, recent changes show that natural causes are not the causes especially the observed warming. Scientists have indicated that human being have become the dominant cause of climate change through various activities such as greenhouse gas emission, deforestation, agriculture and industrialization that have led to the highest percentage of global warming. The fingerprints that humans have left on the environment are the greatest cause of climate change, which when not checked, is likely to lead to greatest disaster on Earth such as famine.