Climate change- Introduction

By the term Climate Change, we refer to the shifts in temperature and weather patterns over a long time. These shifts can be natural that are caused due to variations in the solar cycle. But in recent centuries, human activities have been the leading cause of climate change, mainly due to activities like the burning of fossil fuelslike oil, coal, and gas.

Causes of climate change

Burning fossil fuels produces enormous greenhouse gas emissions like a blanket around the Earth. This blanket of greenhouse gases traps the sun's heat and raises Earth's atmosphere's temperature. As a result, the Earth is 1.1 degrees Celsius warmer now than it was in the late 1800s. Many people assume that climate change only means the temperature rise, but there is much more to it. As our Earth works like a system where everything is connected, changes in one area can easily influence change in all others.

Effects of climate change

Climate change has brought intense droughts, scarcity of water, rise in sea levels due to the melting of polar ice caps, flooding, catastrophic storms, and decreasing biodiversity.

Climate change also affects our health, housing, ability to grow food, etc. In several reports of the United Nations, scientists and reviewers agreed that the global temperature rise must be limited to 1.5-degree Celsius. This will help us avoid the impacts caused by climate change and maintain a livable climate. Yet based on current reports, global warming is expected to reach around 3.2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.