essay on global warming nibandh

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध (Global Warming Essay in Hindi)

पृथ्वी के सतह पर औसतन तापमान का बढ़ना ग्लोबल वार्मिंग (वैश्विक तापमान) कहलाता है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग मुख्य रूप से मानव प्रेरक कारकों के कारण होता है। औद्योगीकरण में ग्रीन हाउस गैसों का अनियंत्रित उत्सर्जन तथा जीवाश्म ईंधन का जलना ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का मुख्य कारण है। ग्रीन हाउस गैस वायुमंडल में सूर्य की गर्मी को वापस जाने से रोकता है यह एक प्रकार के प्रभाव है जिसे “ग्रीन हाउस गैस प्रभाव” के नाम से जाना जाता है । इसके फलस्वरूप पृथ्वी के सतह पर तापमान बढ़ रहा है। पृथ्वी के बढ़ते तापमान के फलस्वरूप पर्यावरण प्रभावित होता है अतः इस पर ध्यान देना आवश्यक है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर छोटे तथा बड़े निबंध (Short and Long Essay on Global Warming in Hindi, Global Warming par Nibandh Hindi mein)

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध (250 – 300 शब्द).

पर्यावरण में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड के मात्रा में वृद्धि के कारण पृथ्वी के सतह पर निरंतर तापमान का बढ़ना ग्लोबल वार्मिंग है। ग्लो पृथ्वी का बढ़ता तापमान विभिन्न आशंकाओं (खतरों) को जन्म देता है, साथ ही इस ग्रह पर जीवन के अस्तित्व के लिए संकट पैदा करता है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण

जीवाश्म ईंधन के दोहन, उर्वरकों का उपयोग, वनों को कांटना, बिजली की अत्यधिक खपत, फ्रिज में उपयोग होने वाले गैस इत्यादि के कारणवश वातावरण में CO2, CO  का अत्यधिक उत्सर्जन हो रहा है।CO2 के स्तर में बढ़ोत्तरी “ग्रीन हाउस गैस प्रभाव” का कारक है, जो सभी ग्रीन हाउस गैस (जलवाष्प, CO2, मीथेन, ओजोन) थर्मल विकरण को अवशोषित करता है, तथा सभी दिशाओं में विकीर्णं होकर और पृथ्वी के सतह पर वापस आ जाते हैं जिससे सतह का तापमान बढ़ कर ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का मुख्य कारण बनता है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का निवारण

हमें पेड़ो की अन्धाधुन कटाई पर रोक लगाना चाहिए, बिजली का उपयोग कम करना चाहिए, लकड़ी को जलाना बंद करना चाहिए आदि।ग्लोबल वार्मिंग दुनिया के सभी देशों के लिए एक बड़ी समस्या है, जिसका समाधान सकारात्मक शुरूआत के साथ करना चाहिए।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रभाव से जीवन पर खतरा बढ़ता जा रहा है। हमें सदैव के लिए बुरी आदतों का त्याग करना चाहिए क्योंकी यह CO2, COके स्तर में वृद्धि कर रहा है और ग्रीन हाउस गैस के प्रभाव से पृथ्वी का तापमान बढ़ रहा है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध – Global Warming par Nibandh (400 शब्द)

आज के समय में ग्लोबल वार्मिंग एक बड़ी पर्यावरण समस्या है जिसका हम सब सामना कर रहे हैं, तथा जिसका समाधान स्थायी रूप से करना आवश्यक हो गया है। वास्तव में पृथ्वी के सतह पर निरंतर तथा स्थायी रूप से तापमान का बढ़ना, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग प्रक्रिया है। सभी देशों द्वारा विश्व स्तर पर इस विषय पर व्यापक रूप से चर्चा होनी चाहिए। यह दशकों से प्रकृति के संतुलन, जैव विविधता तथा जलवायु परिस्थियों को प्रभावित करता आ रहा है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रमुख कारक

ग्रीन हाउस गैस जैसे CO 2 , मीथेन, पृथ्वी पर बढ़ते ग्लोबल वार्मिंग मुख्य कारक हैं। इसका सीधा प्रभाव समुद्री स्तर का विस्तार, पिघलती बर्फ की चट्टाने, ग्लेशियर, अप्रत्याशित जलवायु परिवर्तन पर होता है, यह जीवन पर बढ़ते मृत्यों के संकट का प्रतिनिधित्व करता है। आकड़ों के अनुसार यह अनुमान लगाया जा रहा है की मानव जीवन के बढ़ते मांग के कारण बीसवीं शताब्दी के मध्य से तापमान में बहुत अधिक बढ़ोत्तरी आयी है जिसके फलस्वरूप वैश्विक स्तर पर वायुमंडलीय ग्रीन हाउस गैस सांद्रता के मात्रा में भी वृद्धि हुई है।

पिछली सदी के 1983, 1987, 1988, 1989, और 1991 सबसे गर्म छ: वर्ष रहे हैं, यह मापा गया है। इसने ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में अत्यधिक वृद्धि किया जिसके फलस्वरूप प्राकृतिक आपदाओं का अनपेक्षित प्रकोप सामने आया जैसे- बाढ़, चक्रवात, सुनामी, सूखा, भूस्खलन, भोजन की कमी, बर्फ पिघलना, महामारी रोग, मृत्यों आदि इस कारणवश प्रकृति के घटना चक्र में असंतुलन उत्पन्न होता है जो इस ग्रह पर जीवन के अस्तित्व के समाप्ति का संकेत है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में वृद्धि के कारण, पृथ्वी से वायुमंडल में जल-वाष्पीकरण अधिक होता है जिससे बादल में ग्रीन हाउस गैस का निर्माण होता है जो पुनः ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का कारण बनता है। जीवाश्म ईंधन का जलना, उर्वरक का उपयोग, अन्य गैसों मे वृद्धि जैसे- CFCs, ट्रोपोस्फेरिक ओजोन, और नाइट्रस ऑक्साइड भी ग्योबल वार्मिंग के कारक हैं। तकनीकी आधुनीकरण, प्रदुषण विस्फोट, औद्योगिक विस्तार के बढ़ते मांग, जंगलों की अन्धाधुन कटाई तथा शहरीकरण ग्लोबल वार्मिंग वृद्धि में प्रमुख रूप से सहायक हैं।

हम जंगल की कटाई तथा आधुनिक तकनीक के उपयोग से प्राकृतिक प्रक्रियाओं को विक्षुब्ध (Disturb) कर रहे हैं। जैसे वैश्विक कार्बन चक्र, ओजोन के परत में छेद्र बनना तथा UV तंरगों का पृथ्वी पर आगमन जिससे ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में वृद्धि हो रही है।

हवा से कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड हटाने का एक मुख्य स्त्रोत पेड़ है। तथा पर्यावरण संतुलन बनाये रखने के लिए हमें वनों की कटाई पर रोक लगाना चाहिए तथा ज्यादा से ज्यादा लोगों द्वारा वृक्षारोपड़ किया जाना चाहिए यह ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के स्तर में अत्यधिक कमी ला सकता है। जनसंख्या वृद्धि पर नियंत्रण तथा विनाशकारी प्रोद्यौगिकियों का कम उपयोग भी एक अच्छी पहल है, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग नियंत्रण के लिए।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध – Global Warming per Nibandh (600 शब्द)

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के विभिन्न कारक हैं, जिसमें कुछ प्रकृति प्रदत्त हैं तथा कुछ मानव निर्मित कारक हैं, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में वृद्धि के सबसे प्रमुख कारकों में ग्रीन हाउस गैस है जो कुछ प्राकृतिक प्रक्रियाओं व मानवीय क्रियाओं से उत्पन्न होता है। बीसवीं शताब्दी में, जनसंख्या वृद्धि, ऊर्जा का अत्यधिक उपयोग से ग्रीन हाउस गैस के स्तर में वृद्धि हुई है। लगभग हर जरूरत को पूरा करने के लिए आधुनिक दुनिया में औद्योगीकरण की बढ़ती मांग, जिससे वातावरण में विभिन्न तरह के ग्रीन हाउस गैस की रिहाई होती है।

कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड CO 2 तथा सल्फर डाइऑक्साइड SO 2 की मात्रा हाल ही के वर्षों में दस गुना बढ़ गई है। विभिन्न प्राकृतिक, औद्योगिक क्रियाएं जिसमें प्रकाश संश्लेषण और ऑक्सीकरण भी सम्मिलित है, इन सब से कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड की मात्रा में वृद्धि होती है। अन्य ग्रीन हाउस गैस मीथेन, नाइट्रोजन के ऑक्साइड (नाइट्रस आक्साइड), हॉलोकार्बन, क्लोरोफ्लोरो कार्बन (CFCs), क्लोरीन और ब्रोमीन यौगिक इत्यादि कार्बनिक सामाग्री का अवायवीय अपघटन है। कुछ ग्रीन हाउस गैस वायुमंडल में एकत्र होते है और वायुमंडल के संतुलन को विक्षुब्ध करते हैं। उन में गर्म विकरणों को अवशोंषित करने की क्षमता होती है और इसलिए पृथ्वी के सतह पर तापमान में वृद्धि होती है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रभाव

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के स्त्रोतों में वृद्धि से साफ तौर पर ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रभाव देखा जा सकता है। US भूगर्भीय सर्वेक्षण (US Geological Survey) के अनुसार मोंटाना ग्लेशियर नेशनल पार्क पर 150 ग्लेशियर मौजुद थे पर ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के वजह से वर्तमान में मात्र 25 ग्लेशियर बचे हैं। अधिक स्तर पर जलवायु में परिवर्तन तथा तापमान से ऊर्जा (वायुमंडल के उपरी सतह पर ठंडा तथा ऊष्णकटिबंधीय महासागर के गर्म होने से) लेकर तूफान अधिक खतरनाक, शक्तिशाली और मजबूत बन जाते हैं। 2012 को 1885 के बाद सबसे गर्म वर्ष दर्ज किया है तथा 2003 को 2013 के साथ सबसे गर्म वर्ष के रूप में देखा गया है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के फलस्वरूप वातावरण के जलवायु में, बढ़ती गर्मी का मौसम, कम होता ठंड का मौसम, बर्फ के चट्टानों का पिघलना, तापमान का बढ़ना, हवा परिसंचरण पैटर्न में बदलाव, बिन मौसम के वर्षा का होना, ओजोन परत में छेद्र, भारी तूफान की घटना, चक्रवात, सूखा, बाढ़ और इसी तरह के अनेक प्रभाव हैं।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का समाधान

सरकारी एजेंसियों, व्यवसाय प्रधान, निजी क्षेत्र, NGOs आदि द्वारा बहुत से कार्यक्रम, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग कम करने के लिए चलाएं तथा क्रियान्वित किए जा रहे हैं। ग्लोबल वर्मिंग के वजह से पहुचने वाले क्षति में कुछ क्षति ऐसे हैं (बर्फ की चट्टानों का पिघलना) जिसे किसी भी समाधान के माध्यम से पुनः प्राप्त नहीं किया जा सकता है। जो भी हो हमें रूकना नहीं चाहिए और सबको बेहतर प्रयास करना चाहिए ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रभाव को कम करने के लिए। हमें ग्रीन हाउस गैस का उत्सर्जन कम करना चाहिए तथा वातावरण में हो रहे कुछ जलवायु परिवर्तन जो वर्षों से चला आ रहा है उन्हें अपनाने की कोशिश करनी चाहिए।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग कम करने के उपाय, हमें बिजली के स्थान पर स्वच्छ ऊर्जा जैसे सौर ऊर्जा, पवन ऊर्जा तथा भू-तापिय ऊर्जा द्वारा उत्पादित ऊर्जा का उपयोग करना चाहिए। कोयला, तेल के जलने के स्तर को कम करना चाहिए, परिवहन और ईलेक्ट्रिक उपकरणों का उपयोग कम चाहिए इससे ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का स्तर काफी हद तक कम होगा।

सम्बंधित जानकारी:

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के परिणाम पर निबंध

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Essay on Global Warming – Causes and Solutions

500+ words essay on global warming.

Global Warming is a term almost everyone is familiar with. But, its meaning is still not clear to most of us. So, Global warming refers to the gradual rise in the overall temperature of the atmosphere of the Earth. There are various activities taking place which have been increasing the temperature gradually. Global warming is melting our ice glaciers rapidly. This is extremely harmful to the earth as well as humans. It is quite challenging to control global warming; however, it is not unmanageable. The first step in solving any problem is identifying the cause of the problem. Therefore, we need to first understand the causes of global warming that will help us proceed further in solving it. In this essay on Global Warming, we will see the causes and solutions of Global Warming.

Causes of Global Warming

Global warming has become a grave problem which needs undivided attention. It is not happening because of a single cause but several causes. These causes are both natural as well as manmade. The natural causes include the release of greenhouses gases which are not able to escape from earth, causing the temperature to increase.

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Further, volcanic eruptions are also responsible for global warming. That is to say, these eruptions release tons of carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming. Similarly, methane is also one big issue responsible for global warming.

So, when one of the biggest sources of absorption of carbon dioxide will only disappear, there will be nothing left to regulate the gas. Thus, it will result in global warming. Steps must be taken immediately to stop global warming and make the earth better again.

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Global Warming Solutions

As stated earlier, it might be challenging but it is not entirely impossible. Global warming can be stopped when combined efforts are put in. For that, individuals and governments, both have to take steps towards achieving it. We must begin with the reduction of greenhouse gas.

Furthermore, they need to monitor the consumption of gasoline. Switch to a hybrid car and reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Moreover, citizens can choose public transport or carpool together. Subsequently, recycling must also be encouraged.

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For instance, when you go shopping, carry your own cloth bag. Another step you can take is to limit the use of electricity which will prevent the release of carbon dioxide. On the government’s part, they must regulate industrial waste and ban them from emitting harmful gases in the air. Deforestation must be stopped immediately and planting of trees must be encouraged.

In short, all of us must realize the fact that our earth is not well. It needs to treatment and we can help it heal. The present generation must take up the responsibility of stopping global warming in order to prevent the suffering of future generations. Therefore, every little step, no matter how small carries a lot of weight and is quite significant in stopping global warming.

हिंदी में ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध यहाँ पढ़ें

FAQs on Global Warming

Q.1 List the causes of Global Warming.

A.1 There are various causes of global warming both natural and manmade. The natural one includes a greenhouse gas, volcanic eruption, methane gas and more. Next up, manmade causes are deforestation, mining, cattle rearing, fossil fuel burning and more.

Q.2 How can one stop Global Warming?

A.2 Global warming can be stopped by a joint effort by the individuals and the government. Deforestation must be banned and trees should be planted more. The use of automobiles must be limited and recycling must be encouraged.

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• Essays in Hindi /

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का क्या प्रभाव पड़ता है जानिए इन निबंधों के द्वारा

• Updated on  
• जून 6, 2023

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग 21वीं शताब्दी का सबसे बड़ा खतरा है। धरती पर गर्मी खतरनाक गति से बढ़ रही है। इसके कारण शताब्दियों से जमे हिमखंड पिघल रहे हैं। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग क्योंकि एक बहुत गंभीर समस्या है इसलिए इस पर निबंध कई SAT , UPSC जैसी कई शैक्षणिक और शैक्षिक परीक्षाओं का एक अभिन्न अंग हैं। निबंध  लिखने में सक्षम होना किसी भी भाषा में महारत हासिल करने का एक अभिन्न अंग है। यह अंग्रेजी दक्षता परीक्षाओं के साथ-साथ IELTS , TOEFL आदि का एक महत्वपूर्ण मूल्यांकनात्मक हिस्सा है। हम कह सकते हैं कि निबंध पूरी दुनिया के आकलन के लिए अपने विचारों को स्पष्ट और स्पष्ट रूप से प्रस्तुत करने में एक व्यक्ति की मदद करते हैं। वे एक व्यक्ति की विश्लेषणात्मक सोच भी प्रस्तुत करते हैं और एक व्यक्ति को धाराप्रवाह अपनी राय व्यक्त करने में सक्षम बनाते हैं। इस ब्लॉग के जरिए आप ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध लिखना सीखनें के साथ इस विकट समस्या को गहराई से समझ पाएंगे। तो आइए शुरू करते हैं essay on global warming in hindi, global warming essay in hindi या ग्लोबल वार्मिंग निबंध। 

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ग्लोबल वार्मिंग क्या होती है, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रभाव, भूमंडलीय तापक्रम में वृद्धि क्या है, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध के सैम्पल्स, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध 100-150 शब्दों में, 250 शब्दों में ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध 500 शब्दों में , ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध यूपीएससी, जलवायु परिवर्तन और ग्लोबल वार्मिंग निबंध, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर अनुच्छेद, निबंध लिखने की युक्तियाँ.

वायुमंडल में ग्रीन हाउस गैसों (मीथेन, कार्बन डाय ऑक्साइड, ऑक्साइड और क्लोरो-फ्लूरो-कार्बन) के बढ़ने के कारण पृथ्वी के औसत तापमान में होने वाली बढ़ोतरी को ग्लोबल वार्मिंग कहा जाता है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण बढ़े हुए समुद्र के वाटर लेवल के फलस्वरूप इनका डेवलपमेंट, डिस्ट्रीब्यूशन एवं इनके द्वारा निर्मित विभिन्न टोपोग्राफिकल स्ट्रक्चर प्रभावित हो सकती हैं। इसी प्रकार बहुत सी वनस्पतियों तथा जीवों का पलायन धीरे-धीरे ध्रुवीय प्रदेशों या उच्च पर्वतीय प्रदेशों की तरफ हो सकता है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पिछली शताब्दी में पृथ्वी की औसत सतह के तापमान में असामान्य रूप से तेजी से वृद्धि है, मुख्य रूप से जीवाश्म ईंधन जलाने वाले लोगों द्वारा जारी ग्रीनहाउस गैसों के कारण। ग्रीनहाउस गैसों में मीथेन, नाइट्रस ऑक्साइड, ओजोन, कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड, जल वाष्प और क्लोरोफ्लोरोकार्बन शामिल हैं। हर गुजरते साल के साथ मौसम की भविष्यवाणी अधिक जटिल होती जा रही है, मौसम अधिक अप्रभेद्य होते जा रहे हैं और सामान्य तापमान गर्म होता जा रहा है। 21वीं सदी की शुरुआत के बाद से तूफान, चक्रवात, सूखा, बाढ़ आदि की संख्या में लगातार वृद्धि हुई है। इन सभी परिवर्तनों के पीछे का पर्यवेक्षक ग्लोबल वार्मिंग है। नाम काफी आत्म-व्याख्यात्मक है; इसका अर्थ है पृथ्वी के तापमान में वृद्धि।

पृथ्वी को गर्मी से बचाएं क्योंकि आप इससे अपनी रक्षा करते हैं!

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध लिखते समय ग्लोबल वार्मिंग और पॉइंटर को ध्यान में रखने के विचार से परिचित होने के बाद, global warming essay in hindi के सैंपल के लिए आगे पढ़ते हैं। 

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पृथ्वी के वायुमंडल में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड के स्तर में वृद्धि और पिछली कुछ शताब्दियों से हमारे पर्यावरण को नुकसान पहुंचाने वाली मानवीय गतिविधियों के परिणामस्वरूप होता है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग एक ऐसी चीज है जिसे नजरअंदाज नहीं किया जा सकता है और वैश्विक स्तर पर इस स्थिति से निपटने के लिए कदम उठाने होंगे। पिछले कुछ वर्षों से औसत तापमान में लगातार 1.5 डिग्री सेल्सियस की वृद्धि हो रही है। भविष्य में पृथ्वी को होने वाले नुकसान को रोकने का सबसे अच्छा तरीका, अधिक वनों को काटने पर प्रतिबंध लगाया जाना चाहिए और वनीकरण को प्रोत्साहित किया जाना चाहिए। अपने घरों और कार्यालयों के पास पेड़ लगाकर शुरुआत करें, आयोजनों में भाग लें, पेड़ लगाने का महत्व सिखाएं। नुकसान को पूर्ववत करना असंभव है लेकिन आगे के नुकसान को रोकना संभव है।

लंबे समय से, यह देखा गया है कि पृथ्वी का बढ़ता तापमान वन्य जीवन, जानवरों, मनुष्यों और पृथ्वी पर हर जीवित जीव को प्रभावित करता था। ग्लेशियर पिघल रहे हैं, कई देशों ने पानी की कमी, बाढ़, कटाव शुरू कर दिया है और यह सब ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के लिए इंसानों को छोड़कर किसी को भी दोषी नहीं ठहराया जा सकता है। बिजली संयंत्रों से निकलने वाली गैसों, परिवहन, वनों की कटाई जैसी मानवीय गतिविधियों के परिणामस्वरूप पृथ्वी के वायुमंडल में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड, सीएफ़सी और अन्य प्रदूषकों जैसी गैसों में वृद्धि हुई है। मुख्य सवाल यह है कि हम वर्तमान स्थिति को कैसे नियंत्रित कर सकते हैं और आने वाली पीढ़ियों के लिए एक बेहतर दुनिया का निर्माण कर सकते हैं। इसकी शुरुआत प्रत्येक व्यक्ति के छोटे-छोटे कदमों से होती है।

खरीदारी के सभी उद्देश्यों के लिए टिकाऊ सामग्री से बने कपड़े के थैलों का उपयोग करना शुरू करें, उच्च वाट की रोशनी का उपयोग करने के बजाय ऊर्जा कुशल बल्बों का उपयोग करें, बिजली बंद करें, पानी बर्बाद न करें, वनों की कटाई को समाप्त करें और अधिक पेड़ लगाने को प्रोत्साहित करें। ऊर्जा के उपयोग को पेट्रोलियम या अन्य जीवाश्म ईंधन से पवन और सौर ऊर्जा में स्थानांतरित करें। पुराने कपड़ों को फेंकने के बजाय किसी को दान कर दें ताकि इसे रिसाइकिल किया जा सके। पुरानी किताबें दान करें, कागज बर्बाद न करें। सबसे बढ़कर, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के बारे में जागरूकता फैलाएं। पृथ्वी को बचाने के लिए एक व्यक्ति जो भी छोटा-मोटा काम करता है, वह बड़ी या छोटी मात्रा में योगदान देगा।

यह महत्वपूर्ण है कि हम सीखें कि 1% प्रयास बिना किसी प्रयास के बेहतर है। प्रकृति की देखभाल करने और ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के बारे में बोलने का संकल्प लें। ऊर्जा के उपयोग को पेट्रोलियम या अन्य जीवाश्म ईंधन से पवन और सौर ऊर्जा में स्थानांतरित करें। पुराने कपड़ों को फेंकने के बजाय किसी को दान कर दें ताकि इसे रिसाइकिल किया जा सके। पुरानी किताबें दान करें, कागज बर्बाद न करें। सबसे बढ़कर, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के बारे में जागरूकता फैलाएं। 

इस ग्रह को दर्द होता है, उसे गर्मी से मत दुखाओ।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग भविष्यवाणी नहीं है, यह हो रहा है। इसे नकारने वाला या इससे अनजान व्यक्ति सबसे सरल शब्दों में उलझा हुआ है। क्या हमारे पास रहने के लिए कोई दूसरा ग्रह है? दुर्भाग्य से, हमें केवल यह एक ऐसा ग्रह प्रदान किया गया है जो जीवन को बनाए रख सकता है फिर भी वर्षों से हमने अपनी दुर्दशा से आंखें मूंद ली हैं। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग एक अमूर्त अवधारणा नहीं है, बल्कि एक वैश्विक घटना है जो इस समय भी इतनी धीमी गति से घटित हो रही है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग एक ऐसी घटना है जो हर मिनट हो रही है जिसके परिणामस्वरूप पृथ्वी की समग्र जलवायु में धीरे-धीरे वृद्धि हो रही है। वातावरण में सौर विकिरण को फंसाने वाली ग्रीनहाउस गैसों द्वारा लाया गया, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पृथ्वी के पूरे मानचित्र को बदल सकता है, क्षेत्रों को विस्थापित कर सकता है, कई देशों में बाढ़ ला सकता है और कई जीवन रूपों को नष्ट कर सकता है। चरम मौसम ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का प्रत्यक्ष परिणाम है लेकिन यह संपूर्ण परिणाम नहीं है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के लगभग असीमित प्रभाव हैं जो पृथ्वी पर जीवन के लिए हानिकारक हैं।

दुनिया भर में समुद्र का स्तर प्रति वर्ष 0.12 इंच बढ़ रहा है। ऐसा ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण ध्रुवीय बर्फ की टोपियों के पिघलने के कारण हो रहा है। इससे कई तराई क्षेत्रों में बाढ़ की आवृत्ति बढ़ गई है और प्रवाल भित्तियों को नुकसान पहुंचा है। आर्कटिक ग्लोबल वार्मिंग से सबसे ज्यादा प्रभावित क्षेत्रों में से एक है। वायु की गुणवत्ता पर प्रतिकूल प्रभाव पड़ा है और समुद्री जल की अम्लता भी बढ़ गई है जिससे समुद्री जीवों को गंभीर नुकसान हुआ है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण गंभीर प्राकृतिक आपदाएं आती हैं, जिसका जीवन और संपत्ति पर गंभीर प्रभाव पड़ा है।

जब तक मानव जाति ग्रीनहाउस गैसों का उत्पादन करती है, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में तेजी जारी रहेगी। परिणाम बहुत छोटे पैमाने पर महसूस किए जाते हैं जो निकट भविष्य में और भीषण हो जाएंगे। दिन बचाने की ताकत इंसानों के हाथ में है, जरूरत है दिन को जब्त करने की। ऊर्जा की खपत को व्यक्तिगत आधार पर कम किया जाना चाहिए। ऊर्जा स्रोतों की बर्बादी को कम करने के लिए ईंधन कुशल कारों और अन्य इलेक्ट्रॉनिक्स को प्रोत्साहित किया जाना चाहिए। इससे वायु की गुणवत्ता में भी सुधार होगा और वातावरण में ग्रीनहाउस गैसों की सांद्रता कम होगी। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग एक ऐसी बुराई है जिसे एक साथ लड़ने पर ही हराया जा सकता है।

पहले से कहीं ज्यादा देर हो चुकी है। अगर हम सब आज कदम उठाते हैं, तो कल हमारा भविष्य बहुत उज्जवल होगा। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग हमारे अस्तित्व का अभिशाप है और इससे लड़ने के लिए दुनिया भर में विभिन्न नीतियां सामने आई हैं लेकिन यह पर्याप्त नहीं है। वास्तविक अंतर तब आता है जब हम इससे लड़ने के लिए व्यक्तिगत स्तर पर काम करते हैं। एक अपरिवर्तनीय गलती बनने से पहले इसके आयात को समझना अब महत्वपूर्ण है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग को खत्म करना अत्यंत महत्वपूर्ण है और हम में से प्रत्येक इसके लिए उतना ही जिम्मेदार है जितना कि अगले।  

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के बारे में हमेशा हर जगह सुना जाता है, लेकिन क्या हम जानते हैं कि यह वास्तव में क्या है? सबसे खराब बुराई, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग एक ऐसी घटना है जो जीवन को अधिक घातक रूप से प्रभावित कर सकती है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग से तात्पर्य विभिन्न मानवीय गतिविधियों के परिणामस्वरूप पृथ्वी के तापमान में वृद्धि से है। ग्रह धीरे-धीरे गर्म हो रहा है और उस पर जीवन रूपों के अस्तित्व को खतरा है। अथक अध्ययन और शोध किए जाने के बावजूद, अधिकांश आबादी के लिए ग्लोबल वार्मिंग विज्ञान की एक अमूर्त अवधारणा है। यह वह अवधारणा है जो वर्षों से ग्लोबल वार्मिंग को एक वास्तविक वास्तविकता बनाने में परिणत हुई है, न कि किताबों में शामिल एक कॉन्सेप्ट।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग केवल एक कारण से नहीं होती है जिस पर अंकुश लगाया जा सकता है। ऐसे कई कारक हैं जो ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का कारण बनते हैं, जिनमें से अधिकांश व्यक्ति के दैनिक अस्तित्व का हिस्सा हैं। खाना पकाने, वाहनों में और अन्य पारंपरिक उपयोगों के लिए ईंधन जलाने से कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड, मीथेन जैसी कई अन्य ग्रीनहाउस गैसों का उत्पादन होता है जो ग्लोबल वार्मिंग को तेज करता है। बड़े पैमाने पर वनों की कटाई से ग्लोबल वार्मिंग भी होती है क्योंकि कम ग्रीन कवर के परिणामस्वरूप वातावरण में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड की उपस्थिति बढ़ जाती है जो एक ग्रीनहाउस गैस है। 

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का समाधान खोजना तत्काल महत्व का है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग एक ऐसी घटना है जिससे एकजुट होकर लड़ना होगा। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के गंभीर परिणामों को दूर करने की दिशा में अधिक से अधिक पेड़ लगाना पहला कदम हो सकता है। हरित आवरण बढ़ने से कार्बन चक्र को विनियमित किया जा सकेगा। गैर-नवीकरणीय ऊर्जा के उपयोग से अक्षय ऊर्जा जैसे पवन या सौर ऊर्जा में बदलाव होना चाहिए जो कम प्रदूषण का कारण बनता है और जिससे ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के त्वरण में बाधा उत्पन्न होती है। व्यक्तिगत स्तर पर ऊर्जा की जरूरतों को कम करना और किसी भी रूप में ऊर्जा बर्बाद न करना ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के खिलाफ उठाया जाने वाला सबसे महत्वपूर्ण कदम है।

हम जिस शालीनता की गहरी नींद में चले गए हैं, उससे हमें जगाने के लिए चेतावनी की घंटी बज रही है। मनुष्य प्रकृति के खिलाफ लड़ सकता है और अब समय आ गया है कि हम इसे स्वीकार करें। हमारी सभी वैज्ञानिक प्रगति और तकनीकी आविष्कारों के साथ, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के नकारात्मक प्रभावों से लड़ना असंभव है। हमें यह याद रखना होगा कि हमें अपने पूर्वजों से पृथ्वी विरासत में नहीं मिली है, बल्कि इसे अपनी आने वाली पीढ़ी से उधार लेते हैं और जीवन के अस्तित्व के लिए उन्हें एक स्वस्थ ग्रह देने की जिम्मेदारी हमारे कंधों पर है। 

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग और जलवायु परिवर्तन एक ही सिक्के के दो पहलू हैं। दोनों एक दूसरे से जुड़े हुए हैं और दुनिया भर में प्रमुख चिंता के दो मुद्दे हैं। पृथ्वी के वायुमंडल में कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड, सीएफ़सी, और अन्य प्रदूषक जैसे ग्रीन हाउस गैसों का उत्सर्जन ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का कारण बनता है जिससे जलवायु परिवर्तन होता है। पृथ्वी को हानिकारक पराबैंगनी किरणों से बचाने वाली ओजोन परत में ब्लैक होल बनने लगे हैं। मानवीय गतिविधियों ने जलवायु परिवर्तन और ग्लोबल वार्मिंग को जन्म दिया है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में औद्योगिक कचरे और धुएं का प्रमुख योगदान है। प्रभावित करने वाला एक अन्य कारक जीवाश्म ईंधन का जलना, वनों की कटाई और जलवायु परिवर्तन के कारणों में से एक है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कारण अंटार्कटिका, ग्रीनलैंड और आर्कटिक में पर्वतीय हिमनद सिकुड़ रहे हैं और जलवायु परिवर्तन का कारण बन रहे हैं। पवन और सौर जैसे ऊर्जा स्रोतों के लिए जीवाश्म ईंधन के उपयोग से स्विच करना। कोई भी इलेक्ट्रॉनिक उपकरण खरीदते समय ऊर्जा बचत वाले सितारों के साथ सर्वोत्तम गुणवत्ता खरीदें। पानी बर्बाद न करें और अपने समुदाय में वर्षा जल संचयन को प्रोत्साहित करें। 

एक शब्द जिसका आज हम आम तौर पर सामना करते हैं, वह है ग्लोबल वार्मिंग। शब्द के साथ हमारा परिचय हमारी पाठ्यपुस्तकों और उन नकारात्मक परिणामों तक सीमित है जिनके बारे में हम पढ़ते हैं। लेकिन क्या ग्लोबल वार्मिंग वास्तव में एक सैद्धांतिक अवधारणा से कहीं अधिक है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग मुख्य रूप से मानवीय गतिविधियों के कारण गर्मी के फंसने के कारण पृथ्वी के धीरे-धीरे गर्म होने की घटना को संदर्भित करता है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का एक प्रमुख परिणाम यह है कि इससे पृथ्वी के तापमान में वृद्धि होगी जिससे ध्रुवीय बर्फ की टोपियों का पिघलना, चरम जलवायु और इस तरह सामान्य कामकाज में व्यवधान जैसे गंभीर नकारात्मक प्रभाव होंगे। इसके खतरे केवल कुछ पहलुओं तक ही सीमित नहीं हैं बल्कि सर्वव्यापी हैं और पृथ्वी पर जीवन के अस्तित्व को खतरे में डाल सकते हैं। हालांकि ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के कई कारण हैं, कुछ प्रमुख कारण दूसरों की तुलना में अधिक योगदान करते हैं। ये कारक इसकी दर को तेज करते हैं:

• मनुष्यों की ऊर्जा आवश्यकताओं को पूरा करने के लिए जीवाश्म ईंधन के अत्यधिक जलने से वातावरण में ग्रीनहाउस गैसों का प्रतिशत कई गुना बढ़ जाता है।
• वनों की कटाई मानवीय जरूरतों के लिए पेड़ों की अंधाधुंध कटाई है।
• सतत कृषि और पशुपालन भी मीथेन को पढ़कर ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का कारण बनता है जो एक प्रमुख ग्रीनहाउस गैस है।
• रेफ्रिजरेटर और एसी जैसे उपकरणों में इस्तेमाल होने वाले क्लोरोफ्लोरोकार्बन (सीएफसी) जैसे विभिन्न रसायनों के परिणामस्वरूप भी काफी हद तक ग्लोबल वार्मिंग होती है।

एक प्रभावी निबंध लिखने के लिए ऐसे कौशल की आवश्यकता होती है जो बहुत कम लोगों के पास हो और उससे भी कम लोग जानते हों कि इसे कैसे लागू किया जाए। एक निबंध लिखते समय एक कठिन काम हो सकता है जो कई बार परेशान करने वाला हो सकता है, एक सफल निबंध का मसौदा तैयार करने के लिए कुछ प्रमुख बिंदुओं को शामिल किया जा सकता है। इनमें निबंध की संरचना पर ध्यान केंद्रित करना, इसकी अच्छी तरह से योजना बनाना और महत्वपूर्ण विवरणों पर जोर देना शामिल है। नीचे कुछ संकेत दिए गए हैं जो आपको बेहतर संरचना और अधिक विचारशील निबंध लिखने में मदद कर सकते हैं जो आपके पाठकों तक पहुंचेंगे:

• निरंतरता और प्रासंगिकता सुनिश्चित करने के लिए निबंध की रूपरेखा तैयार करें और निबंध की संरचना में कोई व्यवधान न हो।
• एक थीसिस स्टेटमेंट पर निर्णय लें जो आपके निबंध का आधार बनेगी। यह आपके निबंध का बिंदु होगा और पाठकों को आपके विवाद को समझने में मदद करेगा।
• परिचय की संरचना, एक विस्तृत निकाय और उसके बाद निष्कर्ष का पालन करें ताकि पाठक बिना किसी असंगति के निबंध को एक विशेष तरीके से समझ सकें।
• निबंध को व्यावहारिक और पढ़ने के लिए आकर्षक बनाने के लिए अपनी शुरुआत को आकर्षक बनाएं और अपने निष्कर्ष में समाधान शामिल करें।
• इसे प्रकाशित करने से पहले इसे फिर से पढ़ें और निबंध को और अधिक व्यक्तिगत और पाठकों के लिए अद्वितीय और दिलचस्प बनाने के लिए उसमें अपनी प्रतिभा जोड़ें।  

वर्तमान में मानवीय गतिविधियों के कारण उत्पन्न ग्रीनहाउस गैसों के प्रभावस्वरूप पृथ्वी के दीर्घकालिक औसत तापमान में हुई वृद्धि को  वैश्विक  तापन/ग्लोबल वार्मिंग कहा जाता है ।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग  या वैश्विक तापमान बढ़ने का मतलब है कि पृथ्वी लगातार गर्म होती जा रही है. विज्ञानिकों का कहना है कि आने वाले दिनों में सूखा बढ़ेगा, बाढ़ की घटनाएँ बढ़ेंगी और मौसम का मिज़ाज बुरी तरह बिगड़ा हुआ दिखेगा. इसका असर दिखने भी लगा है. ग्लेशियर पिघल रहे  हैं  और रेगिस्तान पसरते जा रहे  हैं .

वर्ल्ड मिटियोरॉलॉजिकल ऑर्गेनाइज़ेशन की रिपोर्ट में कहा गया है कि कार्बन डाइऑक्साइड, मिथेन और नाइट्रस ऑक्साइड की मात्रा औद्योगिक युग की शुरुआत के बाद से सबसे ज़्यादा है. इन गैसों से ही  ग्लोबल वार्मिंग  होती है.

हमें उम्मीद है कि इस ब्लॉग से आपको ग्लोबल वार्मिंग से जुड़ी सम्पूर्ण जानकारी प्राप्त हुई होगी। इसी और अन्य तरह के ब्लॉग्स पढ़ने के लिए Leverage Edu के साथ बने रहिए।

रश्मि पटेल विविध एजुकेशनल बैकग्राउंड रखने वाली एक पैशनेट राइटर और एडिटर हैं। उनके पास Diploma in Computer Science और BA in Public Administration and Sociology की डिग्री है, जिसका ज्ञान उन्हें UPSC व अन्य ब्लॉग लिखने और एडिट करने में मदद करता है। वर्तमान में, वह हिंदी साहित्य में अपनी दूसरी बैचलर की डिग्री हासिल कर रही हैं, जो भाषा और इसकी समृद्ध साहित्यिक परंपरा के प्रति उनके प्रेम से प्रेरित है। लीवरेज एडु में एडिटर के रूप में 2 साल से ज़्यादा अनुभव के साथ, रश्मि ने छात्रों को मूल्यवान मार्गदर्शन प्रदान करने में अपनी स्किल्स को निखारा है। उन्होंने छात्रों के प्रश्नों को संबोधित करते हुए 1000 से अधिक ब्लॉग लिखे हैं और 2000 से अधिक ब्लॉग को एडिट किया है। रश्मि ने कक्षा 1 से ले कर PhD विद्यार्थियों तक के लिए ब्लॉग लिखे हैं जिन में उन्होंने कोर्स चयन से ले कर एग्जाम प्रिपरेशन, कॉलेज सिलेक्शन, छात्र जीवन से जुड़े मुद्दे, एजुकेशन लोन्स और अन्य कई मुद्दों पर बात की है। Leverage Edu पर उनके ब्लॉग 50 लाख से भी ज़्यादा बार पढ़े जा चुके हैं। रश्मि को नए SEO टूल की खोज व उनका उपयोग करने और लेटेस्ट ट्रेंड्स के साथ अपडेट रहने में गहरी रुचि है। लेखन और संगठन के अलावा, रश्मि पटेल की प्राथमिक रुचि किताबें पढ़ना, कविता लिखना, शब्दों की सुंदरता की सराहना करना है।

प्रातिक्रिया दे जवाब रद्द करें

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ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का बढ़ता खतरा और उपाय

कंक्रीट का जंगल? जो पानी की बरबादी करते हैं, उनसे मैं यही पूछना चाहता हूँ कि क्या उन्होंने बिना पानी के जीने की कोई कला सीख ली है, तो हमें भी बताए, ताकि भावी पीढ़ी बिना पानी के जीना सीख सके। नहीं तो तालाब के स्थान पर मॉल बनाना क्या उचित है? आज हो यही रहा है। पानी को बरबाद करने वालों यह समझ लो कि यही पानी तुम्हें बरबाद करके रहेगा। एक बूँद पानी याने एक बूँद खून, यही समझ लो। पानी आपने बरबाद किया, खून आपके परिवार वालों का बहेगा। क्या अपनी ऑंखों का इतना सक्षम बना लोगे कि अपने ही परिवार के किस प्रिय सदस्य का खून बेकार बहता देख पाओगे? अगर नहीं, तो आज से ही नहीं, बल्कि अभी से पानी की एक-एक बूँद को सहेजना शुरू कर दो। अगर ऐसा नहीं किया, तो मारे जाओगे। वैश्विक तापमान यानी ग्लोबल वार्मिंग आज विश्व की सबसे बड़ी समस्या बन चुकी है। इससे न केवल मनुष्य, बल्कि धरती पर रहने वाला प्रत्येक प्राणी त्रस्त ( परेशान, इन प्राब्लम) है। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग से निपटने के लिए दुनियाभर में प्रयास किए जा रहे हैं, लेकिन समस्या कम होने के बजाय साल-दर-साल बढ़ती ही जा रही है। चूंकि यह एक शुरुआत भर है, इसलिए अगर हम अभी से नहीं संभलें तो भविष्य और भी भयावह ( हारिबल, डार्कनेस, ) हो सकता है। आगे बढ़ने से पहले हम यह जान लें कि आखिर ग्लोबल वार्मिंग है क्या। क्या है ग्लोबल वार्मिंग? जैसा कि नाम से ही साफ है, ग्लोबल वार्मिंग धरती के वातावरण के तापमान में लगातार हो रही बढ़ोतरी है। हमारी धरती प्राकृतिक तौर पर सूर्य की किरणों से उष्मा ( हीट, गर्मी ) प्राप्त करती है। ये किरणें वायुमंडल ( एटमास्पिफयर) से गुजरती हुईं धरती की सतह (जमीन, बेस) से टकराती हैं और फिर वहीं से परावर्तित ( रिफलेक्शन) होकर पुन: लौट जाती हैं। धरती का वायुमंडल कई गैसों से मिलकर बना है जिनमें कुछ ग्रीनहाउस गैसें भी शामिल हैं। इनमें से अधिकांश ( मोस्ट आफ देम, बहुत अधिक ) धरती के ऊपर एक प्रकार से एक प्राकृतिक आवरण ( लेयर, कवर ) बना लेती हैं। यह आवरण लौटती किरणों के एक हिस्से को रोक लेता है और इस प्रकार धरती के वातावरण को गर्म बनाए रखता है। गौरतलब ( इट इस रिकाल्ड, मालूम होना ) है कि मनुष्यों, प्राणियों और पौधों के जीवित रहने के लिए कम से कम 16 डिग्री सेल्शियस तापमान आवश्यक होता है। वैज्ञानिकों का मानना है कि ग्रीनहाउस गैसों में बढ़ोतरी होने पर यह आवरण और भी सघन ( अधिक मोटा होना) या मोटा होता जाता है। ऐसे में यह आवरण सूर्य की अधिक किरणों को रोकने लगता है और फिर यहीं से शुरू हो जाते हैं ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के दुष्प्रभाव ( साइड इफेक्ट) ।

ये भी पढ़े :-  दुनिया पर ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का बढ़ता प्रभाव     

क्या हैं ग्लोबल वार्मिंग की वजह? ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के लिए सबसे ज्यादा जिम्मेदार तो मनुष्य और उसकी गतिविधियां (एक्टिविटीज ) ही हैं। अपने आप को इस धरती का सबसे बुध्दिमान प्राणी समझने वाला मनुष्य अनजाने में या जानबूझकर अपने ही रहवास ( हैबिटेट,रहने का स्थान) को खत्म करने पर तुला हुआ है। मनुष्य जनित ( मानव निर्मित) इन गतिविधियों से कार्बन डायआक्साइड, मिथेन, नाइट्रोजन आक्साइड इत्यादि ग्रीनहाउस गैसों की मात्रा में बढ़ोतरी हो रही है जिससे इन गैसों का आवरण्ा सघन होता जा रहा है। यही आवरण सूर्य की परावर्तित किरणों को रोक रहा है जिससे धरती के तापमान में वृध्दि हो रही है। वाहनों, हवाई जहाजों, बिजली बनाने वाले संयंत्रों ( प्लांटस), उद्योगों इत्यादि से अंधाधुंध होने वाले गैसीय उत्सर्जन ( गैसों का एमिशन, धुआं निकलना ) की वजह से कार्बन डायआक्साइड में बढ़ोतरी हो रही है। जंगलों का बड़ी संख्या में हो रहा विनाश इसकी दूसरी वजह है। जंगल कार्बन डायआक्साइड की मात्रा को प्राकृतिक रूप से नियंत्रित करते हैं, लेकिन इनकी बेतहाशा कटाई से यह प्राकृतिक नियंत्रक (नेचुरल कंटरोल ) भी हमारे हाथ से छूटता जा रहा है। इसकी एक अन्य वजह सीएफसी है जो रेफ्रीजरेटर्स, अग्निशामक ( आग बुझाने वाला यंत्र) यंत्रों इत्यादि में इस्तेमाल की जाती है। यह धरती के ऊपर बने एक प्राकृतिक आवरण ओजोन परत को नष्ट करने का काम करती है। ओजोन परत सूर्य से निकलने वाली घातक पराबैंगनी ( अल्ट्रावायलेट ) किरणों को धरती पर आने से रोकती है। वैज्ञानिकों का कहना है कि इस ओजोन परत में एक बड़ा छिद्र ( होल) हो चुका है जिससे पराबैंगनी किरणें (अल्टा वायलेट रेज ) सीधे धरती पर पहुंच रही हैं और इस तरह से उसे लगातार गर्म बना रही हैं। यह बढ़ते तापमान का ही नतीजा है कि धु्रवों (पोलर्स ) पर सदियों से जमी बर्फ भी पिघलने लगी है। विकसित या हो अविकसित देश, हर जगह बिजली की जरूरत बढ़ती जा रही है। बिजली के उत्पादन ( प्रोडक्शन) के लिए जीवाष्म ईंधन ( फासिल फयूल) का इस्तेमाल बड़ी मात्रा में करना पड़ता है। जीवाष्म ईंधन के जलने पर कार्बन डायआक्साइड पैदा होती है जो ग्रीनहाउस गैसों के प्रभाव को बढ़ा देती है। इसका नतीजा ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के रूप में सामने आता है।

ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रभाव :

और बढ़ेगा वातावरण का तापमान : पिछले दस सालों में धरती के औसत तापमान में 0.3 से 0.6 डिग्री सेल्शियस की बढ़ोतरी हुई है। आशंका यही जताई जा रही है कि आने वाले समय में ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में और बढ़ोतरी ही होगी। समुद्र सतह में बढ़ोतरी : ग्लोबल वार्मिंग से धरती का तापमान बढ़ेगा जिससे ग्लैशियरों पर जमा बर्फ पिघलने लगेगी। कई स्थानों पर तो यह प्रक्रिया शुरू भी हो चुकी है। ग्लैशियरों की बर्फ के पिघलने से समुद्रों में पानी की मात्रा बढ़ जाएगी जिससे साल-दर-साल उनकी सतह में भी बढ़ोतरी होती जाएगी। समुद्रों की सतह बढ़ने से प्राकृतिक तटों का कटाव शुरू हो जाएगा जिससे एक बड़ा हिस्सा डूब जाएगा। इस प्रकार तटीय ( कोस्टल) इलाकों में रहने वाले अधिकांश ( बहुत बडा हिस्सा, मोस्ट आफ देम) लोग बेघर हो जाएंगे। मानव स्वास्थ्य पर असर : जलवायु परिवर्तन का सबसे ज्यादा असर मनुष्य पर ही पड़ेगा और कई लोगों को अपनी जान से हाथ धोना पडेग़ा। गर्मी बढ़ने से मलेरिया, डेंगू और यलो फीवर ( एक प्रकार की बीमारी है जिसका नाम ही यलो फीवर है) जैसे संक्रामक रोग ( एक से दूसरे को होने वाला रोग) बढ़ेंगे। वह समय भी जल्दी ही आ सकता है जब हममें से अधिकाशं को पीने के लिए स्वच्छ जल, खाने के लिए ताजा भोजन और श्वास ( नाक से ली जाने वाली सांस की प्रोसेस) लेने के लिए शुध्द हवा भी नसीब नहीं हो। पशु-पक्षियों व वनस्पतियों पर असर : ग्लोबल वार्मिंग का पशु-पक्षियों और वनस्पतियों पर भी गहरा असर पड़ेगा। माना जा रहा है कि गर्मी बढ़ने के साथ ही पशु-पक्षी और वनस्पतियां धीरे-धीरे उत्तरी और पहाड़ी इलाकों की ओर प्रस्थान ( रवाना होना) करेंगे, लेकिन इस प्रक्रिया में कुछ अपना अस्तित्व ही खो देंगे। शहरों पर असर : इसमें कोई शक नहीं है कि गर्मी बढ़ने से ठंड भगाने के लिए इस्तेमाल में लाई जाने वाली ऊर्जा की खपत (कंजम्शन, उपयोग ) में कमी होगी, लेकिन इसकी पूर्ति एयर कंडिशनिंग में हो जाएगी। घरों को ठंडा करने के लिए भारी मात्रा में बिजली का इस्तेमाल करना होगा। बिजली का उपयोग बढ़ेगा तो उससे भी ग्लोबल वार्मिंग में इजाफा ही होगा। ग्लोबल वार्मिंग से कैसे बचें? ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के प्रति दुनियाभर में चिंता बढ़ रही है। इसका अंदाजा इसी बात से लगाया जा सकता है कि इस साल का नोबेल शांति पुरस्कार पर्यावरण संरक्षण के क्षेत्र में कार्य करने वाली संयुक्त राष्ट्र की संस्था इंटरगवर्नमेंटल पैनल ऑन क्लाइमेंट चेंज (आईपीसीसी) और पर्यावरणवादी अमेरिका के पूर्व उपराष्ट्रपति अल गोर को दिया गया है। लेकिन सवाल यह है कि क्या पर्यावरण संरक्षण के क्षेत्र में काम करने वालों को नोबेल पुरस्कार देने भर से ही ग्लोबल वार्मिंग की समस्या से निपटा जा सकता है? बिल्कुल नहीं। इसके लिए हमें कई प्रयास करने होंगे : 1- सभी देश क्योटो संधि का पालन करें। इसके तहत 2012 तक हानिकारक गैसों के उत्सर्जन ( एमिशन, धुएं ) को कम करना होगा। 2- यह जिम्मेदारी केवल सरकार की नहीं है। हम सभी भी पेटोल, डीजल और बिजली का उपयोग कम करके हानिकारक गैसों को कम कर सकते हैं। 3- जंगलों की कटाई को रोकना होगा। हम सभी अधिक से अधिक पेड लगाएं। इससे भी ग्लोबल वार्मिंग के असर को कम किया जा सकता है। 4- टेक्नीकल डेवलपमेंट से भी इससे निपटा जा सकता है। हम ऐसे रेफ्रीजरेटर्स बनाएं जिनमें सीएफसी का इस्तेमाल न होता हो और ऐसे वाहन बनाएं जिनसे कम से कम धुआं निकलता हो। भोपालवासी डॉ. महेश परिमल का छत्तीसगढ़िया गुजराती. हिन्दी में एमए और भाषा विज्ञान में पीएच.डी. अकादमिक कैरियर है। पत्रकारिता और साहित्य से जुड़े अब तक देश भर के समाचार पत्रों में करीब 700 समसामयिक आलेखों व ललित निबंधों का प्रकाशन का लम्बे लेखन का अनुभव है। पानी उनके संवेदना का गहरा पक्ष रहा है। डॉ. महेश परिमल वर्तमान में भास्कर ग्रुप में अंशकालीन समीक्षक के रूप में कार्यरत् हैं। उनका संपर्क: डॉ. महेश परिमल, 403, भवानी परिसर, इंद्रपुरी भेल, भोपाल. 462022. ईमेल - [email protected]

• Biology Article
• Essay on Global Warming

Essay On Global Warming

Essay on global warming is an important topic for students to understand. The essay brings to light the plight of the environment and the repercussion of anthropogenic activities. Continue reading to discover tips and tricks for writing an engaging and interesting essay on global warming.

Essay On Global Warming in 300 Words

Global warming is a phenomenon where the earth’s average temperature rises due to increased amounts of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and ozone trap the incoming radiation from the sun. This effect creates a natural “blanket”, which prevents the heat from escaping back into the atmosphere. This effect is called the greenhouse effect.

Contrary to popular belief, greenhouse gases are not inherently bad. In fact, the greenhouse effect is quite important for life on earth. Without this effect, the sun’s radiation would be reflected back into the atmosphere, freezing the surface and making life impossible. However, when greenhouse gases in excess amounts get trapped, serious repercussions begin to appear. The polar ice caps begin to melt, leading to a rise in sea levels. Furthermore, the greenhouse effect is accelerated when polar ice caps and sea ice melts. This is due to the fact the ice reflects 50% to 70% of the sun’s rays back into space, but without ice, the solar radiation gets absorbed. Seawater reflects only 6% of the sun’s radiation back into space. What’s more frightening is the fact that the poles contain large amounts of carbon dioxide trapped within the ice. If this ice melts, it will significantly contribute to global warming. 

A related scenario when this phenomenon goes out of control is the runaway-greenhouse effect. This scenario is essentially similar to an apocalypse, but it is all too real. Though this has never happened in the earth’s entire history, it is speculated to have occurred on Venus. Millions of years ago, Venus was thought to have an atmosphere similar to that of the earth. But due to the runaway greenhouse effect, surface temperatures around the planet began rising. 

If this occurs on the earth, the runaway greenhouse effect will lead to many unpleasant scenarios – temperatures will rise hot enough for oceans to evaporate. Once the oceans evaporate, the rocks will start to sublimate under heat. In order to prevent such a scenario, proper measures have to be taken to stop climate change.

More to Read: Learn How Greenhouse Effect works

Tips To Writing the Perfect Essay

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• Begin the essay with an introductory paragraph detailing the history or origin of the given topic.
• Try to reduce the use of jargons. Use sparingly if the topic requires it.
• Ensure that the content is presented in bulleted points wherever appropriate.
• Insert and highlight factual data, such as dates, names and places.
• Remember to break up the content into smaller paragraphs. 100-120 words per paragraph should suffice.
• Always conclude the essay with a closing paragraph.

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Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun’s heat. This leads to global warming and climate change. The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history. Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth. 

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• Prevention of Global Warming Essay

Essay on Prevention of Global Warming

Global warming is an extremely serious concern and we humans must take immediate measures to control it as soon as possible. Industrialization has led to the fast growth of technology, health, and economy but has been ruining planet Earth for the last few centuries. The monumental increase in the accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere has raised an alarm. It will cause a chaotic change that we humans will not be able to survive. This effect also endangers the rest of the species existing harmonically with nature.

Global warming is a serious environmental issue that we need to concentrate on and solve immediately. It all starts with the identification of its causes. It has become a very threatening man-made disaster for the entire planet. We need to immediately act on the causes and stop them so that we can save our planet.

What Causes Global Warming? 

Man-Made activities such as running industries, using appliances emitting CFCs, have contributed to a humongous increase in the accumulation of global warming gasses. These glasses have an innate physical property to trap heat and cause the average temperature of the earth to increase. The accumulation of these gasses creates an invisible blanket in the earth’s atmosphere. This blanket lets the sun rays enter and heat up the earth’s surface. When the earth’s surface emits heat, this blanket does not allow it to pass through and traps it leading to the elevation of the average temperature of the earth.

It has been found that these gasses tend to accumulate more on the polar ice caps. It has a direct influence on the melting of ice caps causing the global sea level to rise. This is resulting in an increase in the average temperature of marine water and hampering its ecosystem. On the other hand, the coral reefs are getting extremely damaged from the rise in temperature too. Marine animals, as well as, freshwater animals are unable to adjust to such drastic changes and are suffering from the threats of extinction.

The rise in average atmospheric temperature will also cause the islands to drown. Many archipelagos of geographical significance will be underwater within a decade. In fact, the coastal lines are also receding causing turmoil in many countries. Scientists across the world have come to the conclusion that we have only 7 years left in our hands to make a change or this global warming will become irreversible causing a catastrophic change in the entire planet.

What can we do as Responsible Human Beings to Control Climate Change? 

Small changes will have a great impact and will help us to fight against global warming. For instance, if we use LED bulbs instead of light bulbs and CFLs, we can contribute to the cause. We can spread awareness regarding the emission of different global warming gasses from factory chimneys and domestic appliances. These glasses should be treated before they are released into the atmosphere. We can also pledge to use eco-friendly products that show immense responsibility towards our planet’s crises.

We can also stop deforestation and do our part by planting more trees. We need to restrict the use of fossil fuels and seek alternative renewable sources of energy. Our lifestyle should become eco-friendlier and more responsible for Mother Earth. Now is the time to act and make everyone aware. Start small but make it big by including everyone you know to protect our planet. We live in a big harmonious ecosystem. Disturbing its balance with manmade disasters like global warming will not leave a chance to survive if not checked. It is time to act accordingly and do every bit on our part to stop this catastrophe.

Some Facts about Global Warming

Global warming is defined as an increase in the average surface temperature of the Earth as a result of greenhouse gasses that accumulate in the atmosphere like a blanket that traps the sun's heat which causes the globe to warm.

Greenhouse gasses trap heat at the surface of the planet, making it habitable for people and animals. Global warming, on the other hand, is mostly due to an excess of these gasses and fossil fuels (natural oil, gasoline, coal).

The industry started growing in the 1700s, as a result, people began to use more fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas to power our automobiles, trucks, and factories. You will save money on petrol and help to avert global warming by driving a "smarter" automobile. 

Today's atmosphere contains more carbon dioxide than at any time in the past 800,000 years.

Global sea levels have risen by around 8 inches since 1870. 

The planet has already been affected by climate change. Glaciers have been shrinking constantly for years now, ice on rivers and lakes has broken up earlier, plant and animal ranges have altered, and trees have begun to bloom earlier.

Heatwaves brought on by global warming increase the risk of heat-related disease and mortality, especially for diabetics who are elderly or very young.

As the water heats, scientists fear that coral reefs may be unable to adapt rapidly enough to the consequent shifting circumstances, leading to an increase in bleaching incidents and illnesses.

FAQs on Prevention of Global Warming Essay

1. What is Global Warming?

Too much carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in the atmosphere behaves as a blanket, trapping heat and warming the earth, resulting in global warming. Carbon accumulates over time and overloads our atmosphere as we burn fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas for electricity or cut down and burn forests to construct pastures and plantations. Other strong global warming gasses, such as methane and nitrous oxide, are released by certain waste management and agricultural methods, worsening the situation. 

2. What Effects are being Witnessed due to Global Warming?

There has been a drastic change in the climatic conditions over a few decades. Due to heavy industrialization and uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases, the average temperature of land and water is increasing. It has harmed the survival of many aquatic and terrestrial animals. If a pillar of an ecosystem is affected, the rest will be affected too. It will trigger a chain reaction causing the human species and other animals to go extinct. Marine life is highly affected. Coral reefs are extremely damaged due to an increase in water temperature. The storms and rainfall have become much stronger. These are a few effects of global warming that scientists have concluded.

3. What can We do to Control Global Warming?

We need to plant more trees, stop the emission of greenhouse gasses as soon as possible, and make people aware of the problem. It is our smallest initiative that will make a huge change in the forthcoming years. We need to stop using any product that contributes to this problem. All we have to remember is that we do not have a spare planet to live on.

4. What is the greenhouse effect?

The greenhouse effect describes how "greenhouse gasses" trap heat at the Earth's surface. The gasses are like a blanket wrapped over the earth which traps the heat, keeping it warmer than it would be otherwise. Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides are examples of greenhouse gasses. Carbon dioxide's warming impact, according to scientists, aids in the stabilization of the Earth's atmosphere. The terrestrial greenhouse effect would be destroyed if carbon dioxide was removed. The Earth's surface would be 33 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) colder without carbon dioxide.

5. What is the difference between global warming and climate change?

Although the phrases "global warming" and "climate change" are frequently interchanged, "global warming" is simply one facet of climate change.

Global warming refers to the planet's long-term warming. Since the early 20th century, and especially since the late 1970s, global temperatures have been steadily rising. In comparison to the mid-20th century, the average surface temperature has risen roughly 1 °C (nearly 2 °F) globally since 1880. (of 1951-1980). This comes on top of an extra 0.15 degrees Celsius of warming between 1750 and 1880.

"Climate change" refers to a larger spectrum of changes that are taking place on our planet than just global warming. Sea levels are also rising day by day, mountain glaciers are decreasing constantly, ice melt in Greenland, Antarctica, and the Arctic is increasing, and flower/plant blooming periods are shifting. All of these are results of global warming, which is mostly caused by humans burning fossil fuels and emitting heat-trapping gasses.

6. Is it too late to prevent climate change?

Humans have already triggered massive climatic changes, and we are on the verge of causing many more. But, if we immediately stopped generating greenhouse gasses, the rise in global temperatures would begin to level out within a few years. Temperatures would subsequently reach a plateau but would stay substantially above normal for several centuries. Although there is a lag between what we do and how we feel, it is less than a decade.

While the consequences of human actions on Earth's climate to date are irreversible on the timeframe of today's people, every amount of prevented future temperature increases results in less warming that would otherwise endure indefinitely. Reduced greenhouse gas emissions provide advantages in the same period as the political actions that result in such reductions.

7. Where can I find notes and questions on Global Warming?

Vedantu provides students with notes and questions on global warming. This contains topics such as what is global warming, the effects of global warming, solutions to global warming, climate change, and much more.  Vedantu's content is created by teachers who are experts in their fields. Furthermore, the data is organized in a way that makes it easier for students to understand and remember the principles. Vedantu also offers study materials and a variety of competitive exams to students in grades 1 through 12. The content includes notes, important topics and questions, revision notes, and other things. All of these resources are available for free on Vedantu. To access any of these resources, students must first register on the Vedantu website. You may also join up using the Vedantu smartphone app.

• ENVIRONMENT

How global warming is disrupting life on Earth

The signs of global warming are everywhere, and are more complex than just climbing temperatures.

Our planet is getting hotter. Since the Industrial Revolution—an event that spurred the use of fossil fuels in everything from power plants to transportation—Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius, about 2 degrees Fahrenheit.  

That may sound insignificant, but 2023 was the hottest year on record , and all 10 of the hottest years on record have occurred in the past decade.  

Global warming and climate change are often used interchangeably as synonyms, but scientists prefer to use “climate change” when describing the complex shifts now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems.  

Climate change encompasses not only rising average temperatures but also natural disasters, shifting wildlife habitats, rising seas , and a range of other impacts. All of these changes are emerging as humans continue to add heat-trapping greenhouse gases , like carbon dioxide and methane, to the atmosphere.

What causes global warming?

When fossil fuel emissions are pumped into the atmosphere, they change the chemistry of our atmosphere, allowing sunlight to reach the Earth but preventing heat from being released into space. This keeps Earth warm, like a greenhouse, and this warming is known as the greenhouse effect .  

Carbon dioxide is the most commonly found greenhouse gas and about 75 percent of all the climate warming pollution in the atmosphere. This gas is a product of producing and burning oil, gas, and coal. About a quarter of Carbon dioxide also results from land cleared for timber or agriculture.  

Methane is another common greenhouse gas. Although it makes up only about 16 percent of emissions, it's roughly 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide and dissipates more quickly. That means methane can cause a large spark in warming, but ending methane pollution can also quickly limit the amount of atmospheric warming. Sources of this gas include agriculture (mostly livestock), leaks from oil and gas production, and waste from landfills.  

What are the effects of global warming?  

One of the most concerning impacts of global warming is the effect warmer temperatures will have on Earth's polar regions and mountain glaciers. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet. This warming reduces critical ice habitat and it disrupts the flow of the jet stream, creating more unpredictable weather patterns around the globe.  

( Learn more about the jet stream. )

A warmer planet doesn't just raise temperatures. Precipitation is becoming more extreme as the planet heats. For every degree your thermometer rises, the air holds about seven percent more moisture. This increase in moisture in the atmosphere can produce flash floods, more destructive hurricanes, and even paradoxically, stronger snow storms.  

The world's leading scientists regularly gather to review the latest research on how the planet is changing. The results of this review is synthesized in regularly published reports known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.  

A recent report outlines how disruptive a global rise in temperature can be:

• Coral reefs are now a highly endangered ecosystem. When corals face environmental stress, such as high heat, they expel their colorful algae and turn a ghostly white, an effect known as coral bleaching . In this weakened state, they more easily die.  
• Trees are increasingly dying from drought , and this mass mortality is reshaping forest ecosystems.
• Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns are making wildfires more common and more widespread. Research shows they're even moving into the eastern U.S. where fires have historically been less common.
• Hurricanes are growing more destructive and dumping more rain, an effect that will result in more damage. Some scientists say we even need to be preparing for Cat 6 storms . (The current ranking system ends at Cat 5.)

How can we limit global warming?  

Limiting the rising in global warming is theoretically achievable, but politically, socially, and economically difficult.  

Those same sources of greenhouse gas emissions must be limited to reduce warming. For example, oil and gas used to generate electricity or power industrial manufacturing will need to be replaced by net zero emission technology like wind and solar power. Transportation, another major source of emissions, will need to integrate more electric vehicles, public transportation, and innovative urban design, such as safe bike lanes and walkable cities.  

( Learn more about solutions to limit global warming. )

One global warming solution that was once considered far fetched is now being taken more seriously: geoengineering. This type of technology relies on manipulating the Earth's atmosphere to physically block the warming rays of the sun or by sucking carbon dioxide straight out of the sky.

Restoring nature may also help limit warming. Trees, oceans, wetlands, and other ecosystems help absorb excess carbon—but when they're lost, so too is their potential to fight climate change.  

Ultimately, we'll need to adapt to warming temperatures, building homes to withstand sea level rise for example, or more efficiently cooling homes during heat waves.  

For Hungry Minds

Related topics.

• CLIMATE CHANGE
• ENVIRONMENT AND CONSERVATION
• POLAR REGIONS

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The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof

Definitive answers to the big questions.

Credit... Photo Illustration by Andrea D'Aquino

Supported by

By Julia Rosen

Ms. Rosen is a journalist with a Ph.D. in geology. Her research involved studying ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica to understand past climate changes.

• Published April 19, 2021 Updated Nov. 6, 2021

The science of climate change is more solid and widely agreed upon than you might think. But the scope of the topic, as well as rampant disinformation, can make it hard to separate fact from fiction. Here, we’ve done our best to present you with not only the most accurate scientific information, but also an explanation of how we know it.

How do we know climate change is really happening?

How much agreement is there among scientists about climate change, do we really only have 150 years of climate data how is that enough to tell us about centuries of change, how do we know climate change is caused by humans, since greenhouse gases occur naturally, how do we know they’re causing earth’s temperature to rise, why should we be worried that the planet has warmed 2°f since the 1800s, is climate change a part of the planet’s natural warming and cooling cycles, how do we know global warming is not because of the sun or volcanoes, how can winters and certain places be getting colder if the planet is warming, wildfires and bad weather have always happened. how do we know there’s a connection to climate change, how bad are the effects of climate change going to be, what will it cost to do something about climate change, versus doing nothing.

Climate change is often cast as a prediction made by complicated computer models. But the scientific basis for climate change is much broader, and models are actually only one part of it (and, for what it’s worth, they’re surprisingly accurate ).

For more than a century , scientists have understood the basic physics behind why greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide cause warming. These gases make up just a small fraction of the atmosphere but exert outsized control on Earth’s climate by trapping some of the planet’s heat before it escapes into space. This greenhouse effect is important: It’s why a planet so far from the sun has liquid water and life!

However, during the Industrial Revolution, people started burning coal and other fossil fuels to power factories, smelters and steam engines, which added more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Ever since, human activities have been heating the planet.

We know this is true thanks to an overwhelming body of evidence that begins with temperature measurements taken at weather stations and on ships starting in the mid-1800s. Later, scientists began tracking surface temperatures with satellites and looking for clues about climate change in geologic records. Together, these data all tell the same story: Earth is getting hotter.

Average global temperatures have increased by 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.2 degrees Celsius, since 1880, with the greatest changes happening in the late 20th century. Land areas have warmed more than the sea surface and the Arctic has warmed the most — by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit just since the 1960s. Temperature extremes have also shifted. In the United States, daily record highs now outnumber record lows two-to-one.

Where it was cooler or warmer in 2020 compared with the middle of the 20th century

This warming is unprecedented in recent geologic history. A famous illustration, first published in 1998 and often called the hockey-stick graph, shows how temperatures remained fairly flat for centuries (the shaft of the stick) before turning sharply upward (the blade). It’s based on data from tree rings, ice cores and other natural indicators. And the basic picture , which has withstood decades of scrutiny from climate scientists and contrarians alike, shows that Earth is hotter today than it’s been in at least 1,000 years, and probably much longer.

In fact, surface temperatures actually mask the true scale of climate change, because the ocean has absorbed 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases . Measurements collected over the last six decades by oceanographic expeditions and networks of floating instruments show that every layer of the ocean is warming up. According to one study , the ocean has absorbed as much heat between 1997 and 2015 as it did in the previous 130 years.

We also know that climate change is happening because we see the effects everywhere. Ice sheets and glaciers are shrinking while sea levels are rising. Arctic sea ice is disappearing. In the spring, snow melts sooner and plants flower earlier. Animals are moving to higher elevations and latitudes to find cooler conditions. And droughts, floods and wildfires have all gotten more extreme. Models predicted many of these changes, but observations show they are now coming to pass.

Back to top .

There’s no denying that scientists love a good, old-fashioned argument. But when it comes to climate change, there is virtually no debate: Numerous studies have found that more than 90 percent of scientists who study Earth’s climate agree that the planet is warming and that humans are the primary cause. Most major scientific bodies, from NASA to the World Meteorological Organization , endorse this view. That’s an astounding level of consensus given the contrarian, competitive nature of the scientific enterprise, where questions like what killed the dinosaurs remain bitterly contested .

Scientific agreement about climate change started to emerge in the late 1980s, when the influence of human-caused warming began to rise above natural climate variability. By 1991, two-thirds of earth and atmospheric scientists surveyed for an early consensus study said that they accepted the idea of anthropogenic global warming. And by 1995, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a famously conservative body that periodically takes stock of the state of scientific knowledge, concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.” Currently, more than 97 percent of publishing climate scientists agree on the existence and cause of climate change (as does nearly 60 percent of the general population of the United States).

So where did we get the idea that there’s still debate about climate change? A lot of it came from coordinated messaging campaigns by companies and politicians that opposed climate action. Many pushed the narrative that scientists still hadn’t made up their minds about climate change, even though that was misleading. Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant, explained the rationale in an infamous 2002 memo to conservative lawmakers: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly,” he wrote. Questioning consensus remains a common talking point today, and the 97 percent figure has become something of a lightning rod .

To bolster the falsehood of lingering scientific doubt, some people have pointed to things like the Global Warming Petition Project, which urged the United States government to reject the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, an early international climate agreement. The petition proclaimed that climate change wasn’t happening, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be bad for humanity. Since 1998, more than 30,000 people with science degrees have signed it. However, nearly 90 percent of them studied something other than Earth, atmospheric or environmental science, and the signatories included just 39 climatologists. Most were engineers, doctors, and others whose training had little to do with the physics of the climate system.

A few well-known researchers remain opposed to the scientific consensus. Some, like Willie Soon, a researcher affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have ties to the fossil fuel industry . Others do not, but their assertions have not held up under the weight of evidence. At least one prominent skeptic, the physicist Richard Muller, changed his mind after reassessing historical temperature data as part of the Berkeley Earth project. His team’s findings essentially confirmed the results he had set out to investigate, and he came away firmly convinced that human activities were warming the planet. “Call me a converted skeptic,” he wrote in an Op-Ed for the Times in 2012.

Mr. Luntz, the Republican pollster, has also reversed his position on climate change and now advises politicians on how to motivate climate action.

A final note on uncertainty: Denialists often use it as evidence that climate science isn’t settled. However, in science, uncertainty doesn’t imply a lack of knowledge. Rather, it’s a measure of how well something is known. In the case of climate change, scientists have found a range of possible future changes in temperature, precipitation and other important variables — which will depend largely on how quickly we reduce emissions. But uncertainty does not undermine their confidence that climate change is real and that people are causing it.

Earth’s climate is inherently variable. Some years are hot and others are cold, some decades bring more hurricanes than others, some ancient droughts spanned the better part of centuries. Glacial cycles operate over many millenniums. So how can scientists look at data collected over a relatively short period of time and conclude that humans are warming the planet? The answer is that the instrumental temperature data that we have tells us a lot, but it’s not all we have to go on.

Historical records stretch back to the 1880s (and often before), when people began to regularly measure temperatures at weather stations and on ships as they traversed the world’s oceans. These data show a clear warming trend during the 20th century.

Global average temperature compared with the middle of the 20th century

+0.75°C

–0.25°

Some have questioned whether these records could be skewed, for instance, by the fact that a disproportionate number of weather stations are near cities, which tend to be hotter than surrounding areas as a result of the so-called urban heat island effect. However, researchers regularly correct for these potential biases when reconstructing global temperatures. In addition, warming is corroborated by independent data like satellite observations, which cover the whole planet, and other ways of measuring temperature changes.

Much has also been made of the small dips and pauses that punctuate the rising temperature trend of the last 150 years. But these are just the result of natural climate variability or other human activities that temporarily counteract greenhouse warming. For instance, in the mid-1900s, internal climate dynamics and light-blocking pollution from coal-fired power plants halted global warming for a few decades. (Eventually, rising greenhouse gases and pollution-control laws caused the planet to start heating up again.) Likewise, the so-called warming hiatus of the 2000s was partly a result of natural climate variability that allowed more heat to enter the ocean rather than warm the atmosphere. The years since have been the hottest on record .

Still, could the entire 20th century just be one big natural climate wiggle? To address that question, we can look at other kinds of data that give a longer perspective. Researchers have used geologic records like tree rings, ice cores, corals and sediments that preserve information about prehistoric climates to extend the climate record. The resulting picture of global temperature change is basically flat for centuries, then turns sharply upward over the last 150 years. It has been a target of climate denialists for decades. However, study after study has confirmed the results , which show that the planet hasn’t been this hot in at least 1,000 years, and probably longer.

Scientists have studied past climate changes to understand the factors that can cause the planet to warm or cool. The big ones are changes in solar energy, ocean circulation, volcanic activity and the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And they have each played a role at times.

For example, 300 years ago, a combination of reduced solar output and increased volcanic activity cooled parts of the planet enough that Londoners regularly ice skated on the Thames . About 12,000 years ago, major changes in Atlantic circulation plunged the Northern Hemisphere into a frigid state. And 56 million years ago, a giant burst of greenhouse gases, from volcanic activity or vast deposits of methane (or both), abruptly warmed the planet by at least 9 degrees Fahrenheit, scrambling the climate, choking the oceans and triggering mass extinctions.

In trying to determine the cause of current climate changes, scientists have looked at all of these factors . The first three have varied a bit over the last few centuries and they have quite likely had modest effects on climate , particularly before 1950. But they cannot account for the planet’s rapidly rising temperature, especially in the second half of the 20th century, when solar output actually declined and volcanic eruptions exerted a cooling effect.

That warming is best explained by rising greenhouse gas concentrations . Greenhouse gases have a powerful effect on climate (see the next question for why). And since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been adding more of them to the atmosphere, primarily by extracting and burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which releases carbon dioxide.

Bubbles of ancient air trapped in ice show that, before about 1750, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was roughly 280 parts per million. It began to rise slowly and crossed the 300 p.p.m. threshold around 1900. CO2 levels then accelerated as cars and electricity became big parts of modern life, recently topping 420 p.p.m . The concentration of methane, the second most important greenhouse gas, has more than doubled. We’re now emitting carbon much faster than it was released 56 million years ago .

30 billion metric tons

Carbon dioxide emitted worldwide 1850-2017

Rest of world

Other developed

European Union

Developed economies

Other countries

United States

E.U. and U.K.

These rapid increases in greenhouse gases have caused the climate to warm abruptly. In fact, climate models suggest that greenhouse warming can explain virtually all of the temperature change since 1950. According to the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assesses published scientific literature, natural drivers and internal climate variability can only explain a small fraction of late-20th century warming.

Another study put it this way: The odds of current warming occurring without anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are less than 1 in 100,000 .

But greenhouse gases aren’t the only climate-altering compounds people put into the air. Burning fossil fuels also produces particulate pollution that reflects sunlight and cools the planet. Scientists estimate that this pollution has masked up to half of the greenhouse warming we would have otherwise experienced.

Greenhouse gases like water vapor and carbon dioxide serve an important role in the climate. Without them, Earth would be far too cold to maintain liquid water and humans would not exist!

Here’s how it works: the planet’s temperature is basically a function of the energy the Earth absorbs from the sun (which heats it up) and the energy Earth emits to space as infrared radiation (which cools it down). Because of their molecular structure, greenhouse gases temporarily absorb some of that outgoing infrared radiation and then re-emit it in all directions, sending some of that energy back toward the surface and heating the planet . Scientists have understood this process since the 1850s .

Greenhouse gas concentrations have varied naturally in the past. Over millions of years, atmospheric CO2 levels have changed depending on how much of the gas volcanoes belched into the air and how much got removed through geologic processes. On time scales of hundreds to thousands of years, concentrations have changed as carbon has cycled between the ocean, soil and air.

Today, however, we are the ones causing CO2 levels to increase at an unprecedented pace by taking ancient carbon from geologic deposits of fossil fuels and putting it into the atmosphere when we burn them. Since 1750, carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by almost 50 percent. Methane and nitrous oxide, other important anthropogenic greenhouse gases that are released mainly by agricultural activities, have also spiked over the last 250 years.

We know based on the physics described above that this should cause the climate to warm. We also see certain telltale “fingerprints” of greenhouse warming. For example, nights are warming even faster than days because greenhouse gases don’t go away when the sun sets. And upper layers of the atmosphere have actually cooled, because more energy is being trapped by greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere.

We also know that we are the cause of rising greenhouse gas concentrations — and not just because we can measure the CO2 coming out of tailpipes and smokestacks. We can see it in the chemical signature of the carbon in CO2.

Carbon comes in three different masses: 12, 13 and 14. Things made of organic matter (including fossil fuels) tend to have relatively less carbon-13. Volcanoes tend to produce CO2 with relatively more carbon-13. And over the last century, the carbon in atmospheric CO2 has gotten lighter, pointing to an organic source.

We can tell it’s old organic matter by looking for carbon-14, which is radioactive and decays over time. Fossil fuels are too ancient to have any carbon-14 left in them, so if they were behind rising CO2 levels, you would expect the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere to drop, which is exactly what the data show .

It’s important to note that water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. However, it does not cause warming; instead it responds to it . That’s because warmer air holds more moisture, which creates a snowball effect in which human-caused warming allows the atmosphere to hold more water vapor and further amplifies climate change. This so-called feedback cycle has doubled the warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

A common source of confusion when it comes to climate change is the difference between weather and climate. Weather is the constantly changing set of meteorological conditions that we experience when we step outside, whereas climate is the long-term average of those conditions, usually calculated over a 30-year period. Or, as some say: Weather is your mood and climate is your personality.

So while 2 degrees Fahrenheit doesn’t represent a big change in the weather, it’s a huge change in climate. As we’ve already seen, it’s enough to melt ice and raise sea levels, to shift rainfall patterns around the world and to reorganize ecosystems, sending animals scurrying toward cooler habitats and killing trees by the millions.

It’s also important to remember that two degrees represents the global average, and many parts of the world have already warmed by more than that. For example, land areas have warmed about twice as much as the sea surface. And the Arctic has warmed by about 5 degrees. That’s because the loss of snow and ice at high latitudes allows the ground to absorb more energy, causing additional heating on top of greenhouse warming.

Relatively small long-term changes in climate averages also shift extremes in significant ways. For instance, heat waves have always happened, but they have shattered records in recent years. In June of 2020, a town in Siberia registered temperatures of 100 degrees . And in Australia, meteorologists have added a new color to their weather maps to show areas where temperatures exceed 125 degrees. Rising sea levels have also increased the risk of flooding because of storm surges and high tides. These are the foreshocks of climate change.

And we are in for more changes in the future — up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit of average global warming by the end of the century, in the worst-case scenario . For reference, the difference in global average temperatures between now and the peak of the last ice age, when ice sheets covered large parts of North America and Europe, is about 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

Under the Paris Climate Agreement, which President Biden recently rejoined, countries have agreed to try to limit total warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, since preindustrial times. And even this narrow range has huge implications . According to scientific studies, the difference between 2.7 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit will very likely mean the difference between coral reefs hanging on or going extinct, and between summer sea ice persisting in the Arctic or disappearing completely. It will also determine how many millions of people suffer from water scarcity and crop failures, and how many are driven from their homes by rising seas. In other words, one degree Fahrenheit makes a world of difference.

Earth’s climate has always changed. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the entire planet froze . Fifty million years ago, alligators lived in what we now call the Arctic . And for the last 2.6 million years, the planet has cycled between ice ages when the planet was up to 11 degrees cooler and ice sheets covered much of North America and Europe, and milder interglacial periods like the one we’re in now.

Climate denialists often point to these natural climate changes as a way to cast doubt on the idea that humans are causing climate to change today. However, that argument rests on a logical fallacy. It’s like “seeing a murdered body and concluding that people have died of natural causes in the past, so the murder victim must also have died of natural causes,” a team of social scientists wrote in The Debunking Handbook , which explains the misinformation strategies behind many climate myths.

Indeed, we know that different mechanisms caused the climate to change in the past. Glacial cycles, for example, were triggered by periodic variations in Earth’s orbit , which take place over tens of thousands of years and change how solar energy gets distributed around the globe and across the seasons.

These orbital variations don’t affect the planet’s temperature much on their own. But they set off a cascade of other changes in the climate system; for instance, growing or melting vast Northern Hemisphere ice sheets and altering ocean circulation. These changes, in turn, affect climate by altering the amount of snow and ice, which reflect sunlight, and by changing greenhouse gas concentrations. This is actually part of how we know that greenhouse gases have the ability to significantly affect Earth’s temperature.

For at least the last 800,000 years , atmospheric CO2 concentrations oscillated between about 180 parts per million during ice ages and about 280 p.p.m. during warmer periods, as carbon moved between oceans, forests, soils and the atmosphere. These changes occurred in lock step with global temperatures, and are a major reason the entire planet warmed and cooled during glacial cycles, not just the frozen poles.

Today, however, CO2 levels have soared to 420 p.p.m. — the highest they’ve been in at least three million years . The concentration of CO2 is also increasing about 100 times faster than it did at the end of the last ice age. This suggests something else is going on, and we know what it is: Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases that are heating the planet now (see Question 5 for more details on how we know this, and Questions 4 and 8 for how we know that other natural forces aren’t to blame).

Over the next century or two, societies and ecosystems will experience the consequences of this climate change. But our emissions will have even more lasting geologic impacts: According to some studies, greenhouse gas levels may have already warmed the planet enough to delay the onset of the next glacial cycle for at least an additional 50,000 years.

The sun is the ultimate source of energy in Earth’s climate system, so it’s a natural candidate for causing climate change. And solar activity has certainly changed over time. We know from satellite measurements and other astronomical observations that the sun’s output changes on 11-year cycles. Geologic records and sunspot numbers, which astronomers have tracked for centuries, also show long-term variations in the sun’s activity, including some exceptionally quiet periods in the late 1600s and early 1800s.

We know that, from 1900 until the 1950s, solar irradiance increased. And studies suggest that this had a modest effect on early 20th century climate, explaining up to 10 percent of the warming that’s occurred since the late 1800s. However, in the second half of the century, when the most warming occurred, solar activity actually declined . This disparity is one of the main reasons we know that the sun is not the driving force behind climate change.

Another reason we know that solar activity hasn’t caused recent warming is that, if it had, all the layers of the atmosphere should be heating up. Instead, data show that the upper atmosphere has actually cooled in recent decades — a hallmark of greenhouse warming .

So how about volcanoes? Eruptions cool the planet by injecting ash and aerosol particles into the atmosphere that reflect sunlight. We’ve observed this effect in the years following large eruptions. There are also some notable historical examples, like when Iceland’s Laki volcano erupted in 1783, causing widespread crop failures in Europe and beyond, and the “ year without a summer ,” which followed the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia.

Since volcanoes mainly act as climate coolers, they can’t really explain recent warming. However, scientists say that they may also have contributed slightly to rising temperatures in the early 20th century. That’s because there were several large eruptions in the late 1800s that cooled the planet, followed by a few decades with no major volcanic events when warming caught up. During the second half of the 20th century, though, several big eruptions occurred as the planet was heating up fast. If anything, they temporarily masked some amount of human-caused warming.

The second way volcanoes can impact climate is by emitting carbon dioxide. This is important on time scales of millions of years — it’s what keeps the planet habitable (see Question 5 for more on the greenhouse effect). But by comparison to modern anthropogenic emissions, even big eruptions like Krakatoa and Mount St. Helens are just a drop in the bucket. After all, they last only a few hours or days, while we burn fossil fuels 24-7. Studies suggest that, today, volcanoes account for 1 to 2 percent of total CO2 emissions.

When a big snowstorm hits the United States, climate denialists can try to cite it as proof that climate change isn’t happening. In 2015, Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, famously lobbed a snowball in the Senate as he denounced climate science. But these events don’t actually disprove climate change.

While there have been some memorable storms in recent years, winters are actually warming across the world. In the United States, average temperatures in December, January and February have increased by about 2.5 degrees this century.

On the flip side, record cold days are becoming less common than record warm days. In the United States, record highs now outnumber record lows two-to-one . And ever-smaller areas of the country experience extremely cold winter temperatures . (The same trends are happening globally.)

So what’s with the blizzards? Weather always varies, so it’s no surprise that we still have severe winter storms even as average temperatures rise. However, some studies suggest that climate change may be to blame. One possibility is that rapid Arctic warming has affected atmospheric circulation, including the fast-flowing, high-altitude air that usually swirls over the North Pole (a.k.a. the Polar Vortex ). Some studies suggest that these changes are bringing more frigid temperatures to lower latitudes and causing weather systems to stall , allowing storms to produce more snowfall. This may explain what we’ve experienced in the U.S. over the past few decades, as well as a wintertime cooling trend in Siberia , although exactly how the Arctic affects global weather remains a topic of ongoing scientific debate .

Climate change may also explain the apparent paradox behind some of the other places on Earth that haven’t warmed much. For instance, a splotch of water in the North Atlantic has cooled in recent years, and scientists say they suspect that may be because ocean circulation is slowing as a result of freshwater streaming off a melting Greenland . If this circulation grinds almost to a halt, as it’s done in the geologic past, it would alter weather patterns around the world.

Not all cold weather stems from some counterintuitive consequence of climate change. But it’s a good reminder that Earth’s climate system is complex and chaotic, so the effects of human-caused changes will play out differently in different places. That’s why “global warming” is a bit of an oversimplification. Instead, some scientists have suggested that the phenomenon of human-caused climate change would more aptly be called “ global weirding .”

Extreme weather and natural disasters are part of life on Earth — just ask the dinosaurs. But there is good evidence that climate change has increased the frequency and severity of certain phenomena like heat waves, droughts and floods. Recent research has also allowed scientists to identify the influence of climate change on specific events.

Let’s start with heat waves . Studies show that stretches of abnormally high temperatures now happen about five times more often than they would without climate change, and they last longer, too. Climate models project that, by the 2040s, heat waves will be about 12 times more frequent. And that’s concerning since extreme heat often causes increased hospitalizations and deaths, particularly among older people and those with underlying health conditions. In the summer of 2003, for example, a heat wave caused an estimated 70,000 excess deaths across Europe. (Human-caused warming amplified the death toll .)

Climate change has also exacerbated droughts , primarily by increasing evaporation. Droughts occur naturally because of random climate variability and factors like whether El Niño or La Niña conditions prevail in the tropical Pacific. But some researchers have found evidence that greenhouse warming has been affecting droughts since even before the Dust Bowl . And it continues to do so today. According to one analysis , the drought that afflicted the American Southwest from 2000 to 2018 was almost 50 percent more severe because of climate change. It was the worst drought the region had experienced in more than 1,000 years.

Rising temperatures have also increased the intensity of heavy precipitation events and the flooding that often follows. For example, studies have found that, because warmer air holds more moisture, Hurricane Harvey, which struck Houston in 2017, dropped between 15 and 40 percent more rainfall than it would have without climate change.

It’s still unclear whether climate change is changing the overall frequency of hurricanes, but it is making them stronger . And warming appears to favor certain kinds of weather patterns, like the “ Midwest Water Hose ” events that caused devastating flooding across the Midwest in 2019 .

It’s important to remember that in most natural disasters, there are multiple factors at play. For instance, the 2019 Midwest floods occurred after a recent cold snap had frozen the ground solid, preventing the soil from absorbing rainwater and increasing runoff into the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. These waterways have also been reshaped by levees and other forms of river engineering, some of which failed in the floods.

Wildfires are another phenomenon with multiple causes. In many places, fire risk has increased because humans have aggressively fought natural fires and prevented Indigenous peoples from carrying out traditional burning practices. This has allowed fuel to accumulate that makes current fires worse .

However, climate change still plays a major role by heating and drying forests, turning them into tinderboxes. Studies show that warming is the driving factor behind the recent increases in wildfires; one analysis found that climate change is responsible for doubling the area burned across the American West between 1984 and 2015. And researchers say that warming will only make fires bigger and more dangerous in the future.

It depends on how aggressively we act to address climate change. If we continue with business as usual, by the end of the century, it will be too hot to go outside during heat waves in the Middle East and South Asia . Droughts will grip Central America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa. And many island nations and low-lying areas, from Texas to Bangladesh, will be overtaken by rising seas. Conversely, climate change could bring welcome warming and extended growing seasons to the upper Midwest , Canada, the Nordic countries and Russia . Farther north, however, the loss of snow, ice and permafrost will upend the traditions of Indigenous peoples and threaten infrastructure.

It’s complicated, but the underlying message is simple: unchecked climate change will likely exacerbate existing inequalities . At a national level, poorer countries will be hit hardest, even though they have historically emitted only a fraction of the greenhouse gases that cause warming. That’s because many less developed countries tend to be in tropical regions where additional warming will make the climate increasingly intolerable for humans and crops. These nations also often have greater vulnerabilities, like large coastal populations and people living in improvised housing that is easily damaged in storms. And they have fewer resources to adapt, which will require expensive measures like redesigning cities, engineering coastlines and changing how people grow food.

Already, between 1961 and 2000, climate change appears to have harmed the economies of the poorest countries while boosting the fortunes of the wealthiest nations that have done the most to cause the problem, making the global wealth gap 25 percent bigger than it would otherwise have been. Similarly, the Global Climate Risk Index found that lower income countries — like Myanmar, Haiti and Nepal — rank high on the list of nations most affected by extreme weather between 1999 and 2018. Climate change has also contributed to increased human migration, which is expected to increase significantly .

Even within wealthy countries, the poor and marginalized will suffer the most. People with more resources have greater buffers, like air-conditioners to keep their houses cool during dangerous heat waves, and the means to pay the resulting energy bills. They also have an easier time evacuating their homes before disasters, and recovering afterward. Lower income people have fewer of these advantages, and they are also more likely to live in hotter neighborhoods and work outdoors, where they face the brunt of climate change.

These inequalities will play out on an individual, community, and regional level. A 2017 analysis of the U.S. found that, under business as usual, the poorest one-third of counties, which are concentrated in the South, will experience damages totaling as much as 20 percent of gross domestic product, while others, mostly in the northern part of the country, will see modest economic gains. Solomon Hsiang, an economist at University of California, Berkeley, and the lead author of the study, has said that climate change “may result in the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the country’s history.”

Even the climate “winners” will not be immune from all climate impacts, though. Desirable locations will face an influx of migrants. And as the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated, disasters in one place quickly ripple across our globalized economy. For instance, scientists expect climate change to increase the odds of multiple crop failures occurring at the same time in different places, throwing the world into a food crisis .

On top of that, warmer weather is aiding the spread of infectious diseases and the vectors that transmit them, like ticks and mosquitoes . Research has also identified troubling correlations between rising temperatures and increased interpersonal violence , and climate change is widely recognized as a “threat multiplier” that increases the odds of larger conflicts within and between countries. In other words, climate change will bring many changes that no amount of money can stop. What could help is taking action to limit warming.

One of the most common arguments against taking aggressive action to combat climate change is that doing so will kill jobs and cripple the economy. But this implies that there’s an alternative in which we pay nothing for climate change. And unfortunately, there isn’t. In reality, not tackling climate change will cost a lot , and cause enormous human suffering and ecological damage, while transitioning to a greener economy would benefit many people and ecosystems around the world.

Let’s start with how much it will cost to address climate change. To keep warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement, society will have to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this century. That will require significant investments in things like renewable energy, electric cars and charging infrastructure, not to mention efforts to adapt to hotter temperatures, rising sea-levels and other unavoidable effects of current climate changes. And we’ll have to make changes fast.

Estimates of the cost vary widely. One recent study found that keeping warming to 2 degrees Celsius would require a total investment of between $4 trillion and $60 trillion, with a median estimate of $16 trillion, while keeping warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius could cost between $10 trillion and $100 trillion, with a median estimate of $30 trillion. (For reference, the entire world economy was about $88 trillion in 2019.) Other studies have found that reaching net zero will require annual investments ranging from less than 1.5 percent of global gross domestic product to as much as 4 percent . That’s a lot, but within the range of historical energy investments in countries like the U.S.

Now, let’s consider the costs of unchecked climate change, which will fall hardest on the most vulnerable. These include damage to property and infrastructure from sea-level rise and extreme weather, death and sickness linked to natural disasters, pollution and infectious disease, reduced agricultural yields and lost labor productivity because of rising temperatures, decreased water availability and increased energy costs, and species extinction and habitat destruction. Dr. Hsiang, the U.C. Berkeley economist, describes it as “death by a thousand cuts.”

As a result, climate damages are hard to quantify. Moody’s Analytics estimates that even 2 degrees Celsius of warming will cost the world $69 trillion by 2100, and economists expect the toll to keep rising with the temperature. In a recent survey , economists estimated the cost would equal 5 percent of global G.D.P. at 3 degrees Celsius of warming (our trajectory under current policies) and 10 percent for 5 degrees Celsius. Other research indicates that, if current warming trends continue, global G.D.P. per capita will decrease between 7 percent and 23 percent by the end of the century — an economic blow equivalent to multiple coronavirus pandemics every year. And some fear these are vast underestimates .

Already, studies suggest that climate change has slashed incomes in the poorest countries by as much as 30 percent and reduced global agricultural productivity by 21 percent since 1961. Extreme weather events have also racked up a large bill. In 2020, in the United States alone, climate-related disasters like hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires caused nearly $100 billion in damages to businesses, property and infrastructure, compared to an average of $18 billion per year in the 1980s.

Given the steep price of inaction, many economists say that addressing climate change is a better deal . It’s like that old saying: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this case, limiting warming will greatly reduce future damage and inequality caused by climate change. It will also produce so-called co-benefits, like saving one million lives every year by reducing air pollution, and millions more from eating healthier, climate-friendly diets. Some studies even find that meeting the Paris Agreement goals could create jobs and increase global G.D.P . And, of course, reining in climate change will spare many species and ecosystems upon which humans depend — and which many people believe to have their own innate value.

The challenge is that we need to reduce emissions now to avoid damages later, which requires big investments over the next few decades. And the longer we delay, the more we will pay to meet the Paris goals. One recent analysis found that reaching net-zero by 2050 would cost the U.S. almost twice as much if we waited until 2030 instead of acting now. But even if we miss the Paris target, the economics still make a strong case for climate action, because every additional degree of warming will cost us more — in dollars, and in lives.

Veronica Penney contributed reporting.

Illustration photographs by Esther Horvath, Max Whittaker, David Maurice Smith and Talia Herman for The New York Times; Esther Horvath/Alfred-Wegener-Institut

An earlier version of this article misidentified the authors of The Debunking Handbook. It was written by social scientists who study climate communication, not a team of climate scientists.

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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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Climate Change: Evidence and Causes: Update 2020 (2020)

Chapter: conclusion, c onclusion.

This document explains that there are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. It discusses the evidence that the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Further climate change is inevitable; if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. There remains a range of estimates of the magnitude and regional expression of future change, but increases in the extremes of climate that can adversely affect natural ecosystems and human activities and infrastructure are expected.

Citizens and governments can choose among several options (or a mixture of those options) in response to this information: they can change their pattern of energy production and usage in order to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and hence the magnitude of climate changes; they can wait for changes to occur and accept the losses, damage, and suffering that arise; they can adapt to actual and expected changes as much as possible; or they can seek as yet unproven “geoengineering” solutions to counteract some of the climate changes that would otherwise occur. Each of these options has risks, attractions and costs, and what is actually done may be a mixture of these different options. Different nations and communities will vary in their vulnerability and their capacity to adapt. There is an important debate to be had about choices among these options, to decide what is best for each group or nation, and most importantly for the global population as a whole. The options have to be discussed at a global scale because in many cases those communities that are most vulnerable control few of the emissions, either past or future. Our description of the science of climate change, with both its facts and its uncertainties, is offered as a basis to inform that policy debate.

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following individuals served as the primary writing team for the 2014 and 2020 editions of this document:

• Eric Wolff FRS, (UK lead), University of Cambridge
• Inez Fung (NAS, US lead), University of California, Berkeley
• Brian Hoskins FRS, Grantham Institute for Climate Change
• John F.B. Mitchell FRS, UK Met Office
• Tim Palmer FRS, University of Oxford
• Benjamin Santer (NAS), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• John Shepherd FRS, University of Southampton
• Keith Shine FRS, University of Reading.
• Susan Solomon (NAS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Walsh, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
• Don Wuebbles, University of Illinois

Staff support for the 2020 revision was provided by Richard Walker, Amanda Purcell, Nancy Huddleston, and Michael Hudson. We offer special thanks to Rebecca Lindsey and NOAA Climate.gov for providing data and figure updates.

The following individuals served as reviewers of the 2014 document in accordance with procedures approved by the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences:

• Richard Alley (NAS), Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University
• Alec Broers FRS, Former President of the Royal Academy of Engineering
• Harry Elderfield FRS, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
• Joanna Haigh FRS, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Imperial College London
• Isaac Held (NAS), NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
• John Kutzbach (NAS), Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin
• Jerry Meehl, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
• John Pendry FRS, Imperial College London
• John Pyle FRS, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge
• Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey
• Gabrielle Walker, Journalist
• Andrew Watson FRS, University of East Anglia

The Support for the 2014 Edition was provided by NAS Endowment Funds. We offer sincere thanks to the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Endowment for NAS Missions for supporting the production of this 2020 Edition.

F OR FURTHER READING

For more detailed discussion of the topics addressed in this document (including references to the underlying original research), see:

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2019: Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [ https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc ]
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2019: Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259 ]
• Royal Society, 2018: Greenhouse gas removal [ https://raeng.org.uk/greenhousegasremoval ]
• U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), 2018: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States [ https://nca2018.globalchange.gov ]
• IPCC, 2018: Global Warming of 1.5°C [ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 ]
• USGCRP, 2017: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume I: Climate Science Special Reports [ https://science2017.globalchange.gov ]
• NASEM, 2016: Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852 ]
• IPCC, 2013: Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group 1. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis [ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1 ]
• NRC, 2013: Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18373 ]
• NRC, 2011: Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12877 ]
• Royal Society 2010: Climate Change: A Summary of the Science [ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/climate-change-summary-science ]
• NRC, 2010: America’s Climate Choices: Advancing the Science of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12782 ]

Much of the original data underlying the scientific findings discussed here are available at:

• https://data.ucar.edu/
• https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu
• https://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu
• https://ess-dive.lbl.gov/
• https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
• https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
• http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu
• http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot/

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth's climate. The Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, with their similar missions to promote the use of science to benefit society and to inform critical policy debates, produced the original Climate Change: Evidence and Causes in 2014. It was written and reviewed by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists. This new edition, prepared by the same author team, has been updated with the most recent climate data and scientific analyses, all of which reinforce our understanding of human-caused climate change.

Scientific information is a vital component for society to make informed decisions about how to reduce the magnitude of climate change and how to adapt to its impacts. This booklet serves as a key reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and others seeking authoritative answers about the current state of climate-change science.

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Responding to the Climate Threat: Essays on Humanity’s Greatest Challenge

A new book co-authored by MIT Joint Program Founding Co-Director Emeritus Henry Jacoby

From the Back Cover

This book demonstrates how robust and evolving science can be relevant to public discourse about climate policy. Fighting climate change is the ultimate societal challenge, and the difficulty is not just in the wrenching adjustments required to cut greenhouse emissions and to respond to change already under way. A second and equally important difficulty is ensuring widespread public understanding of the natural and social science. This understanding is essential for an effective risk management strategy at a planetary scale. The scientific, economic, and policy aspects of climate change are already a challenge to communicate, without factoring in the distractions and deflections from organized programs of misinformation and denial. 

Here, four scholars, each with decades of research on the climate threat, take on the task of explaining our current understanding of the climate threat and what can be done about it, in lay language―importantly, without losing critical  aspects of the natural and social science. In a series of essays, published during the 2020 presidential election, the COVID pandemic, and through the fall of 2021, they explain the essential components of the challenge, countering the forces of distrust of the science and opposition to a vigorous national response.  

Each of the essays provides an opportunity to learn about a particular aspect of climate science and policy within the complex context of current events. The overall volume is more than the sum of its individual articles. Proceeding each essay is an explanation of the context in which it was written, followed by observation of what has happened since its first publication. In addition to its discussion of topical issues in modern climate science, the book also explores science communication to a broad audience. Its authors are not only scientists – they are also teachers, using current events to teach when people are listening. For preserving Earth’s planetary life support system, science and teaching are essential. Advancing both is an unending task.

About the Authors

Gary Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He served as convening lead author for multiple chapters and the Synthesis Report for the IPCC from 1990 through 2014 and was vice-chair of the Third U.S. National Climate Assessment.

Henry Jacoby is the William F. Pounds Professor of Management, Emeritus, in the MIT Sloan School of Management and former co-director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is focused on the integration of the natural and social sciences and policy analysis in application to the threat of global climate change.

Richard Richels directed climate change research at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He served as lead author for multiple chapters of the IPCC in the areas of mitigation, impacts and adaptation from 1992 through 2014. He also served on the National Assessment Synthesis Team for the first U.S. National Climate Assessment.

Ben Santer is a climate scientist and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow. He contributed to all six IPCC reports. He was the lead author of Chapter 8 of the 1995 IPCC report which concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate”. He is currently a Visiting Researcher at UCLA’s Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering.

Access the Book

View the book on the publisher's website  here .

Order the book from Amazon  here . 

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Global Warming Essay in English (Causes and Solutions) - 100, 200, 500 Words

• Essay on Global Warming

The planet is now undergoing changes and modernization is happening at a rapid rate. We desire development in all areas of life. In the name of expansion, an increasing number of industries are being founded. But as humanity has grown, the state of the planet's ecology has substantially deteriorated. When discussing significant environmental dangers, the phrase "Global Warming" is frequently used. The causes and consequences of global warming are still largely unknown to many people. Here are a few sample essays on global warming:

100 Words Essay on Global Warming

200 words essay on global warming, 500 words essay on global warming.

An increase in the Earth's average global temperature is known as global warming. Global warming is mostly caused by burning more fossil fuels and the emission of hazardous pollutants into the atmosphere. Living things can suffer greatly as a result of global warming. The temperature suddenly rises in some places, while in others, it suddenly drops. The use of fossil fuels for energy is the main cause of global warming. It has been noticed that over the last ten years, the Earth's average temperature has risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius. This is cause for concern because it can harm ecosystems and lead to environmental disturbance. If we take decisive action to replace the destroyed vegetation in our forests, we can stop global warming. To slow the rate of global warming, we can also use sustainable energy sources like sun, wind, and tidal energy.

Over time, the cumulative increase in Earth's average global temperatures is referred to as global warming. It has been said that large-scale deforestation by humans for various reasons is to blame. Every year, we use a lot of fuel. It is becoming impossible to meet people's fuel needs as the human population has increased. Natural resources must be used carefully as they are limited. The ecosystem will become unbalanced if humans overuse mineral wealth like forests and waterways. Temperature increases alone are not the only sign of global warming. It also has other consequences.

Natural disasters, including storms, floods, and avalanches , are happening all over the planet. These all have a direct connection to global warming. To protect our environment we must rebuild our ecology to defend it against the negative effects of global warming. To make this globe a nicer place for the generations to come, who also appreciate this Earth in the same way we do, we must all work together. Planting trees is the fundamental action we can do to improve the condition of our world as a whole. Our main objective should be reforestation. If we commit to growing as many plants as we can during our lifetimes, the Earth will become a better place.

The gradual increase in surface climate caused by various factors is known as global warming. It poses serious risks to both the environment and humanity. Climate change effects include global warming . The main contributor to global warming is the unavoidable release of greenhouse gases. Methane and carbon dioxide are two of the main greenhouse gases. There are numerous other causes and ramifications of this warming, which endangers Earth's life.

Reasons Responsible For Global Warming

The causes of global warming are several. These problems are caused by both nature and humanity. Because of the presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere , the heat rays that the Earth's surface reflects become trapped there. The "greenhouse effect" is what results from this phenomenon. It is necessary to keep our world from turning into a frozen ball. Global warming results from too much carbon dioxide trapping all the heat from the Earth's surface. The primary gases that cause global warming are referred to as greenhouse gases.

The main greenhouse gases are methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and carbon dioxide . These gases cause global warming when their concentrations are out of balance. Volcanic eruptions, solar radiation, and other natural occurrences are a few examples that contribute to global warming. People's excessive use of cars and fossil fuels also raises carbon dioxide levels. Among the most prevalent and quickly spreading issues causing global warming is deforestation. The level of carbon dioxide in the air is rising because trees are being cut down. Additional reasons contributing to global warming include the expanding population, industrialisation, pollution, etc.

How Climate Change Impacts Us

Numerous variations in the weather are brought on by global warming, including lengthier summers and fewer winters, greater temperatures, modifications to the trade winds, rain that falls throughout the year, melting polar ice caps, a weaker ozone barrier, etc. Additionally, it may result in a rise in natural disasters, including severe storms, cyclones, floods, and many others. Plants, animals, and other environmental elements are directly impacted by the harm produced by global warming. The rising sea level, swift glacier melting, and other effects of global warming are significant. As global warming worsens, marine life is negatively impacted, significantly destroying marine life and causing additional issues.

Preventing Global Warming

Finding the proper solution is crucial now more than ever since global warming has become a serious issue and is being discussed globally at international forums and conferences. It is time that the age of industrialization to be controlled and continued in a sustainable manner. Everybody, from communities to governments, needs to work together to solve the issue of global warming. Controlling pollution, population growth, and the limiting exploitation of natural resources are a few factors to consider. Using public transportation or carpooling with others will be very helpful. Therefore, recycling should also be promoted to individuals.

There are clear signs that the increase in global warming will wipe out all life on the surface of the world. Global warming is the greatest threat to humanity and cannot be disregarded. Additionally, it is difficult to manage. By participating and responding, we can help lessen its effects.

Also Read: Essay on Diwali in English for Children and Students

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What is climate change mitigation and why is it urgent?

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• Climate change mitigation involves actions to reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.
• Mitigation efforts include transitioning to renewable energy sources, enhancing energy efficiency, adopting regenerative agricultural practices and protecting and restoring forests and critical ecosystems.
• Effective mitigation requires a whole-of-society approach and structural transformations to reduce emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
• International cooperation, for example through the Paris Agreement, is crucial in guiding and achieving global and national mitigation goals.
• Mitigation efforts face challenges such as the world's deep-rooted dependency on fossil fuels, the increased demand for new mineral resources and the difficulties in revamping our food systems.
• These challenges also offer opportunities to improve resilience and contribute to sustainable development.

What is climate change mitigation?

Climate change mitigation refers to any action taken by governments, businesses or people to reduce or prevent greenhouse gases, or to enhance carbon sinks that remove them from the atmosphere. These gases trap heat from the sun in our planet’s atmosphere, keeping it warm. 

Since the industrial era began, human activities have led to the release of dangerous levels of greenhouse gases, causing global warming and climate change. However, despite unequivocal research about the impact of our activities on the planet’s climate and growing awareness of the severe danger climate change poses to our societies, greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. If we can slow down the rise in greenhouse gases, we can slow down the pace of climate change and avoid its worst consequences.

Reducing greenhouse gases can be achieved by:

• Shifting away from fossil fuels : Fossil fuels are the biggest source of greenhouse gases, so transitioning to modern renewable energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power, and advancing sustainable modes of transportation, is crucial.
• Improving energy efficiency : Using less energy overall – in buildings, industries, public and private spaces, energy generation and transmission, and transportation – helps reduce emissions. This can be achieved by using thermal comfort standards, better insulation and energy efficient appliances, and by improving building design, energy transmission systems and vehicles.
• Changing agricultural practices : Certain farming methods release high amounts of methane and nitrous oxide, which are potent greenhouse gases. Regenerative agricultural practices – including enhancing soil health, reducing livestock-related emissions, direct seeding techniques and using cover crops – support mitigation, improve resilience and decrease the cost burden on farmers.
• The sustainable management and conservation of forests : Forests act as carbon sinks , absorbing carbon dioxide and reducing the overall concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Measures to reduce deforestation and forest degradation are key for climate mitigation and generate multiple additional benefits such as biodiversity conservation and improved water cycles.
• Restoring and conserving critical ecosystems : In addition to forests, ecosystems such as wetlands, peatlands, and grasslands, as well as coastal biomes such as mangrove forests, also contribute significantly to carbon sequestration, while supporting biodiversity and enhancing climate resilience.
• Creating a supportive environment : Investments, policies and regulations that encourage emission reductions, such as incentives, carbon pricing and limits on emissions from key sectors are crucial to driving climate change mitigation.

Photo: Stephane Bellerose/UNDP Mauritius

Photo: La Incre and Lizeth Jurado/PROAmazonia

What is the 1.5°C goal and why do we need to stick to it?

In 2015, 196 Parties to the UN Climate Convention in Paris adopted the Paris Agreement , a landmark international treaty, aimed at curbing global warming and addressing the effects of climate change. Its core ambition is to cap the rise in global average temperatures to well below 2°C above levels observed prior to the industrial era, while pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

The 1.5°C goal is extremely important, especially for vulnerable communities already experiencing severe climate change impacts. Limiting warming below 1.5°C will translate into less extreme weather events and sea level rise, less stress on food production and water access, less biodiversity and ecosystem loss, and a lower chance of irreversible climate consequences.

To limit global warming to the critical threshold of 1.5°C, it is imperative for the world to undertake significant mitigation action. This requires a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent before 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century.

What are the policy instruments that countries can use to drive mitigation?

Everyone has a role to play in climate change mitigation, from individuals adopting sustainable habits and advocating for change to governments implementing regulations, providing incentives and facilitating investments. The private sector, particularly those businesses and companies responsible for causing high emissions, should take a leading role in innovating, funding and driving climate change mitigation solutions. 

International collaboration and technology transfer is also crucial given the global nature and size of the challenge. As the main platform for international cooperation on climate action, the Paris Agreement has set forth a series of responsibilities and policy tools for its signatories. One of the primary instruments for achieving the goals of the treaty is Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) . These are the national climate pledges that each Party is required to develop and update every five years. NDCs articulate how each country will contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhance climate resilience.   While NDCs include short- to medium-term targets, long-term low emission development strategies (LT-LEDS) are policy tools under the Paris Agreement through which countries must show how they plan to achieve carbon neutrality by mid-century. These strategies define a long-term vision that gives coherence and direction to shorter-term national climate targets.

Photo: Mucyo Serge/UNDP Rwanda

Photo: William Seal/UNDP Sudan

At the same time, the call for climate change mitigation has evolved into a call for reparative action, where high-income countries are urged to rectify past and ongoing contributions to the climate crisis. This approach reflects the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which advocates for climate justice, recognizing the unequal historical responsibility for the climate crisis, emphasizing that wealthier countries, having profited from high-emission activities, bear a greater obligation to lead in mitigating these impacts. This includes not only reducing their own emissions, but also supporting vulnerable countries in their transition to low-emission development pathways.

Another critical aspect is ensuring a just transition for workers and communities that depend on the fossil fuel industry and its many connected industries. This process must prioritize social equity and create alternative employment opportunities as part of the shift towards renewable energy and more sustainable practices.

For emerging economies, innovation and advancements in technology have now demonstrated that robust economic growth can be achieved with clean, sustainable energy sources. By integrating renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind and geothermal power into their growth strategies, these economies can reduce their emissions, enhance energy security and create new economic opportunities and jobs. This shift not only contributes to global mitigation efforts but also sets a precedent for sustainable development.

What are some of the challenges slowing down climate change mitigation efforts?

Mitigating climate change is fraught with complexities, including the global economy's deep-rooted dependency on fossil fuels and the accompanying challenge of eliminating fossil fuel subsidies. This reliance – and the vested interests that have a stake in maintaining it – presents a significant barrier to transitioning to sustainable energy sources.

The shift towards decarbonization and renewable energy is driving increased demand for critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth metals. Since new mining projects can take up to 15 years to yield output, mineral supply chains could become a bottleneck for decarbonization efforts. In addition, these minerals are predominantly found in a few, mostly low-income countries, which could heighten supply chain vulnerabilities and geopolitical tensions.

Furthermore, due to the significant demand for these minerals and the urgency of the energy transition, the scaled-up investment in the sector has the potential to exacerbate environmental degradation, economic and governance risks, and social inequalities, affecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and workers. Addressing these concerns necessitates implementing social and environmental safeguards, embracing circular economy principles, and establishing and enforcing responsible policies and regulations .

Agriculture is currently the largest driver of deforestation worldwide. A transformation in our food systems to reverse the impact that agriculture has on forests and biodiversity is undoubtedly a complex challenge. But it is also an important opportunity. The latest IPCC report highlights that adaptation and mitigation options related to land, water and food offer the greatest potential in responding to the climate crisis. Shifting to regenerative agricultural practices will not only ensure a healthy, fair and stable food supply for the world’s population, but also help to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

Photo: UNDP India

Photo: Nino Zedginidze/UNDP Georgia

What are some examples of climate change mitigation?

In Mauritius , UNDP, with funding from the Green Climate Fund, has supported the government to install battery energy storage capacity that has enabled 50 MW of intermittent renewable energy to be connected to the grid, helping to avoid 81,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. 

In Indonesia , UNDP has been working with the government for over a decade to support sustainable palm oil production. In 2019, the country adopted a National Action Plan on Sustainable Palm Oil, which was collaboratively developed by government, industry and civil society representatives. The plan increased the adoption of practices to minimize the adverse social and environmental effects of palm oil production and to protect forests. Since 2015, 37 million tonnes of direct greenhouse gas emissions have been avoided and 824,000 hectares of land with high conservation value have been protected.

In Moldova and Paraguay , UNDP has helped set up Green City Labs that are helping build more sustainable cities. This is achieved by implementing urban land use and mobility planning, prioritizing energy efficiency in residential buildings, introducing low-carbon public transport, implementing resource-efficient waste management, and switching to renewable energy sources. 

UNDP has supported the governments of Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Indonesia to implement results-based payments through the REDD+ (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries) framework. These include payments for environmental services and community forest management programmes that channel international climate finance resources to local actors on the ground, specifically forest communities and Indigenous Peoples. 

UNDP is also supporting small island developing states like the Comoros to invest in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. Through the Africa Minigrids Program , solar minigrids will be installed in two priority communities, Grand Comore and Moheli, providing energy access through distributed renewable energy solutions to those hardest to reach.

And in South Africa , a UNDP initative to boost energy efficiency awareness among the general population and improve labelling standards has taken over commercial shopping malls.

What is UNDP’s role in supporting climate change mitigation?

UNDP aims to assist countries with their climate change mitigation efforts, guiding them towards sustainable, low-carbon and climate-resilient development. This support is in line with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly those related to affordable and clean energy (SDG7), sustainable cities and communities (SDG11), and climate action (SDG13). Specifically, UNDP’s offer of support includes developing and improving legislation and policy, standards and regulations, capacity building, knowledge dissemination, and financial mobilization for countries to pilot and scale-up mitigation solutions such as renewable energy projects, energy efficiency initiatives and sustainable land-use practices. 

With financial support from the Global Environment Facility and the Green Climate Fund, UNDP has an active portfolio of 94 climate change mitigation projects in 69 countries. These initiatives are not only aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also at contributing to sustainable and resilient development pathways.

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• Published: 14 May 2024

2023 summer warmth unparalleled over the past 2,000 years

• Jan Esper   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3919-014X 1 , 2 ,
• Max Torbenson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2720-2238 1 &
• Ulf Büntgen 2 , 3 , 4  

Nature ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

• Climate change
• Palaeoclimate

Including an exceptionally warm Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer 1 ,2 , 2023 has been reported as the hottest year on record 3-5 . Contextualizing recent anthropogenic warming against past natural variability is nontrivial, however, because the sparse 19 th century meteorological records tend to be too warm 6 . Here, we combine observed and reconstructed June-August (JJA) surface air temperatures to show that 2023 was the warmest NH extra-tropical summer over the past 2000 years exceeding the 95% confidence range of natural climate variability by more than half a degree Celsius. Comparison of the 2023 JJA warming against the coldest reconstructed summer in 536 CE reveals a maximum range of pre-Anthropocene-to-2023 temperatures of 3.93°C. Although 2023 is consistent with a greenhouse gases-induced warming trend 7 that is amplified by an unfolding El Niño event 8 , this extreme emphasizes the urgency to implement international agreements for carbon emission reduction.

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Department of Geography, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

Jan Esper & Max Torbenson

Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

Jan Esper & Ulf Büntgen

Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Ulf Büntgen

Department of Geography, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

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Esper, J., Torbenson, M. & Büntgen, U. 2023 summer warmth unparalleled over the past 2,000 years. Nature (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07512-y

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Received : 16 January 2024

Accepted : 02 May 2024

Published : 14 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07512-y

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