Causes of Global Climate Change
There are two main causes of climate change:
- Solar Activity
- Human Activity
Solar Activity
The amount of radiation from the sun is not constant. Over the history of our planet there have been periods with a lot of radiation and periods with little radiation. When the earth is going through a period of less radiation the global temperature cools. When earth gets more radiation it heats up. These are natural cycles that sun goes through. If you look at the graph below you can see an example of solar radiation changing over time:
Human Activity
Lately scientists have discovered that the earth is heating up much faster than normal. It is now known that human activity on earth is causing this rapid temperature increase. The main reason has been linked to the production of carbon dioxide, which you can see from the graph below:
What have you noticed? There are two important things you can see:
- Temperature and CO2 concentration follow each other: Temperature increases when CO2 concentration increases.
- CO2 concentration has increased dramatically since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800’s. This is also when people started to use fuel burning machines to do work for them.
Now let’s look at a graph of CO2 concentration since the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
We can see that since the Industrial Revolution CO2 concentration on earth has increased by 100 parts per million, that is a 50% increase! Scientists are convinced that this rise in CO2 levels is causing the climate to change and rise global temperatures. We can also see that almost all of the worlds CO2 is coming from human activities that burn coal, oil or gas for energy! If we look at the pie chart below we can see what these activities are:
The Gathering Storm
Now that we know a bit about what causes Global Climate Change we can watch the next chapter in the series The Gathering Storm called Escaping Floods which can be seen by clicking HERE
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