Is Global Warming Real?

Just as its name implies, global warming or climate change is related to the continuous rise in temperature of Earth's surface, atmosphere and ocean. In the last decades, human contributed to global warming to a very high extent. A major source is the greenhouse effect, which means environmental warming as a result of heat trapped by the atmosphere. Different gasses such as water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane, Nitrous oxide and Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) contribute to this atmospheric heating.

Is Global warming Real?

According to NASA, the amount of solar energy received by planet earth has been affected by several variations in earth's orbit. It was seen that the last ice age ended about 7000 years ago which marked the beginning of human civilization. Over the past 650,000 years, there have been numerous cycles of glacial grow (advance) and shrink (retreat).

These numerous cycles are as a result of continuous precipitation, melting and sublimation of glaciers. As glaciers melt, they slowly slide down their valleys while during precipitation, more mass is added. This cycle results in glacier to be seen extending further down the valley.

Presently, glaciers are seen to retreat at a faster rate while its advance gets slower compared to previous records.

Science showed that over 52 million years ago, the earth was relatively warm. Tropical conditions extended down to northern Spain and most parts of the central United States. Approximately 20 million years ago, planet earth experienced a cooling phase which extended beyond 15 million years. Continental scale ice sheet was noticed in East Antarctica while the mean annual air temperature in North America was seen to have dropped by around 54 degrees.

Generally, over the last 600 million years, planet earth has undergone continuous climate changes. These past climatic change are evident from the geological records of ancient environments, fossils of plant pollen and fossil distribution.

According to NCDC, "The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for February 2016 was the highest for February in the 137-year period of record, at 1.21°C (2.18°F) above the 20th century average of 12.1°C (53.9°F)." In December 2015, NCDC set an all-time monthly record and it was seen that the average temperature in February 2016 exceeded this record by 0.09°C (0.16°F).

Global warming facts

Today, many topics are being debated about Earth and one of them is the issue of global warming. Information about global warming and its related topics are seen to be searched over 10,000 times over the internet. The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) data centers has been providing answers to some of the most pressing global change questions that remain unresolved.

Furthermore, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) contains records that show an accurate view of climatic fluctuations at time scales of a century and longer. The NCEI's has acquired its data from resources such as: Ships, buoys, weather stations, weather balloons, satellites, radar, climate proxy records such as tree rings and ice cores.

In 2016, Countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Canada, United States, Southern Argentina and Iceland has witnessed an effect of Climatic change compared to previous years.

Effects of global warming

Out of numerous effects of global warming, some of them are seen to be

Rise in sea level

This phenomenon has been witnessed more frequently and seen to be doubled as compared to previous records in the last decade. A good example is the sea level rise in the Republic of Maldives or sea level rise as measured by satellite.

Global rise in atmospheric temperature
Rise in Ocean temperature
Continuous shrinking of ice sheet
Declining Arctic sea ice
Glacial shrink
Decreased snow fall over the years

How to stop global warming

After detailed study about global warming and its effects, the most challenging problem has been how to stop it. There are still many people who do not believe that global warming is real, hence a solution keeps becoming difficult to achieve.

Nevertheless, some suggested ways to stop global warming are: