how to change the course of global warming

by Agnes Carter 9 min read

How can we change global warming?

10 Ways to Stop Global WarmingChange a light. Replacing one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.Drive less. ... Recycle more. ... Check your tires. ... Use less hot water. ... Avoid products with a lot of packaging. ... Adjust your thermostat. ... Plant a tree.More items...

Can we change the course of climate change?

Yes. While we cannot stop global warming overnight, we can slow the rate and limit the amount of global warming by reducing human emissions of heat-trapping gases and soot (“black carbon”).

What are 3 ways to reduce global warming?

The best global warming solutionsPlant trees. What to do: ... Create more sustainable transportation habits. You knew this one was coming… ... Lower your heating bill. ... Divest from coal, and encourage others to do the same. ... Eat less beef. ... Educate girls. ... Advocate for a healthy planet. ... Convince your friends to behave sustainably.

What is a solution to stop global warming?

What are the alternatives? Renewable energies like solar, wind, biomass and geothermal. Producing clean energy is essential, but reducing our consumption of energy and water by using more efficient devices (e.g. LED light bulbs, innovative shower systems) is less costly and equally important.

What are the top 10 ways to prevent global warming?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.Walk, Bike (run, skate, move yourself!)Ride the bus to work (or carpool)Plant a tree.Use Less Heat and Air Conditioning.Change a Light Bulb.Buy a fuel efficient car (or hybrid vehicle)Buy local goods and products.More items...

How can we reduce global warming paragraph?

Opt for eco-friendly options like solar energy and win power. Take up the habit of recycling and reusing. Do not throw away things instead learn to reuse them properly. Further, carpool with your neighbors and relatives to not contribute to automobile exhausts and emissions.

What are 10 things we can change to reduce greenhouse effect?

How You Can Help Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions at HomeGet a home energy audit.Use Renewable energy.Purchase Solar Panels.Buy Green Tags.Purchase Carbon offsets.Adjust your thermostat.Install solar lights.Use energy-saving light bulbs.More items...•

What is the most effective solution to climate change?

Cutting carbon is the only long-term solution for avoiding climate impacts. In the short-term, we need to adapt. That means everything from discouraging development in high-risk areas, to planning for water scarcity, to building more resilient cities and communities.

Do students want to learn about climate change?

A survey in Europe found that just 4 percent of students feel they know a lot about climate change; 42 percent feel they have learned a little, hardly anything, or nothing about it at school; and 57 percent of students want to learn more.

What is the role of students in climate change?

Some simple changes college students can take to contribute to climate action include the following: Using public transportation. Participating in green initiatives through sustainability offices or organizations on campus. Asking administrators about their plans for greener campus operations.

Why is learning about climate change important?

Knowledge regarding this phenomenon helps young people to understand and tackle the consequences of global warming, encourages them to change their behaviour and helps them to adapt to what is already a global emergency. Education will be a key tool in the fight against climate change in the coming years.

Why is climate change education important?

In the classroom, young people can be taught the impact of global warming and learn how to adapt to climate change. Education empowers all people, but especially motivates the young to take action. Knowing the facts helps eliminate the fear of an issue which is frequently colored by doom and gloom in the public arena.

Environment

Climate

  • Earth has experienced climate change in the past without help from humanity. But the current climatic warming is occurring much more rapidly than past warming events. As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years. In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degre…
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Setting

  • In Earths history before the Industrial Revolution, Earths climate changed due to natural causes unrelated to human activity. These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades.
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Models

  • Models predict that as the world consumes ever more fossil fuel, greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise, and Earths average surface temperature will rise with them. Based on plausible emission scenarios, average surface temperatures could rise between 2°C and 6°C by the end of the 21st century. Some of this warming will occur even if future greenhouse gas emis…
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Impact

  • The impact of global warming is far greater than just increasing temperatures. Warming modifies rainfall patterns, amplifies coastal erosion, lengthens the growing season in some regions, melts ice caps and glaciers, and alters the ranges of some infectious diseases. Some of these changes are already occurring.
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Mechanism

  • Earths temperature begins with the Sun. Roughly 30 percent of incoming sunlight is reflected back into space by bright surfaces like clouds and ice. Of the remaining 70 percent, most is absorbed by the land and ocean, and the rest is absorbed by the atmosphere. The absorbed solar energy heats our planet. As the rocks, the air, and the seas warm, th...
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Function

  • When they absorb the energy radiating from Earths surface, microscopic water or greenhouse gas molecules turn into tiny heaters like the bricks in a fireplace, they radiate heat even after the fire goes out. They radiate in all directions. The energy that radiates back toward Earth heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface, enhancing the heating they get from direct sunlight.
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Research

  • See the Earth Observatorys series Paleoclimatology for details about how scientists study past climates.
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Timeline

  • Using this ancient evidence, scientists have built a record of Earths past climates, or paleoclimates. The paleoclimate record combined with global models shows past ice ages as well as periods even warmer than today. But the paleoclimate record also reveals that the current climatic warming is occurring much more rapidly than past warming events.
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Causes

  • These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades. We know this because scientists closely monitor the natural and human activities that influence climate with a fleet of satellites and surface instruments. Scientists theorize that there may be a multi-decadal trend in solar out…
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Applications

  • Scientists integrate these measurements into climate models to recreate temperatures recorded over the past 150 years. Climate model simulations that consider only natural solar variability and volcanic aerosols since 1750omitting observed increases in greenhouse gasesare able to fit the observations of global temperatures only up until about 1950. After that point, the decadal trend …
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Characteristics

  • Each cycle exhibits subtle differences in intensity and duration. As of early 2010, the solar brightness since 2005 has been slightly lower, not higher, than it was during the previous 11-year minimum in solar activity, which occurred in the late 1990s. This implies that the Suns impact between 2005 and 2010 might have been to slightly decrease the warming that greenhouse emi…
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Purpose

  • To further explore the causes and effects of global warming and to predict future warming, scientists build climate modelscomputer simulations of the climate system. Climate models are designed to simulate the responses and interactions of the oceans and atmosphere, and to account for changes to the land surface, both natural and human-induced. They comply with fun…
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Example

  • Perhaps the most well known feedback comes from melting snow and ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Warming temperatures are already melting a growing percentage of Arctic sea ice, exposing dark ocean water during the perpetual sunlight of summer. Snow cover on land is also dwindling in many areas. In the absence of snow and ice, these areas go from having bright, sun…
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Introduction

  • The question that scientists ask is, how much water vapor will be in the atmosphere in a warming world? The atmosphere currently has an average equilibrium or balance between water vapor concentration and temperature. As temperatures warm, the atmosphere becomes capable of containing more water vapor, and so water vapor concentrations go up to regain equilibrium. Wil…
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Advantages

  • The amount of water vapor that enters the atmosphere ultimately determines how much additional warming will occur due to the water vapor feedback. The atmosphere responds quickly to the water vapor feedback. So far, most of the atmosphere has maintained a near constant balance between temperature and water vapor concentration as temperatures have gone up in r…
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Effects

  • If clouds become brighter, or the geographical extent of bright clouds expands, they will tend to cool Earths surface. Clouds can become brighter if more moisture converges in a particular region or if more fine particles (aerosols) enter the air. If fewer bright clouds form, it will contribute to warming from the cloud feedback.
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Formation

  • Clouds, like greenhouse gases, also absorb and re-emit infrared energy. Low, warm clouds emit more energy than high, cold clouds. However, in many parts of the world, energy emitted by low clouds can be absorbed by the abundant water vapor above them. Further, low clouds often have nearly the same temperatures as the Earths surface, and so emit similar amounts of infrared en…
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Benefits

  • If warmer temperatures result in a greater amount of high clouds, then less infrared energy will be emitted to space. In other words, more high clouds would enhance the greenhouse effect, reducing the Earths capability to cool and causing temperatures to warm.
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Future

  • Scientists arent entirely sure where and to what degree clouds will end up amplifying or moderating warming, but most climate models predict a slight overall positive feedback or amplification of warming due to a reduction in low cloud cover. A recent observational study found that fewer low, dense clouds formed over a region in the Pacific Ocean when temperature…
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