Climate Synthesis

Visible Trends in Climate

As we have been taking measurements and expanding our records for multiple decades, it’s easy to visually show the trends that keep scientists up late at night. The image below shows carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration within the atmosphere by year, as well as global temperature changes over that same time, normalized to be the difference from the 1881-1910 average. As we’ll discuss below, CO₂ is just one greenhouse gas that scientists are concerned with, but CO₂ is the largest, and we can clearly see a connection between these datasets (Climate Central).

Has the world gone through temperature shifts in the past? Yes! If you look back 20000 years, you’ll find that during the last ice age the Earth was up to 8℃ (14.4℉) cooler than it is today (Marcott and Shakun). However, shifts in temperature and atmospheric composition take thousands of years typically, and even in the expanded timeline we can still clearly see the human impact on global temperatures. A shock of this nature has not been seen in Earth’s history, and is so quickly occurring that plants and animals do not have the necessary time to adapt to changing climate conditions. Other major shocks to the Earth’s climate were accompanied by mass extinctions across the planet (Kaiho).

If every single day was 1.5℃ (2.7℉) warmer across the planet, consistently, the damage done would still be severe, but possibly less. Another major concern with this warming atmosphere is that the effects are not consistent, across the surface and day to day. In the United States alone, the changes to the climate have led to increases in natural disasters including hurricanes, wildfires, and even winter storms (NOAA). As climate change influences these events it increases the frequency of them and strengthens them, which also makes them deadlier (IPCC).

These are just a few of the visible trends when it comes to climate change, and scientists are routinely analyzing every possible dataset to understand what trends we expect to see, which trends are surprising, and why.

References

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