Five charts on climate change
As global temperatures rise, climate change is becoming a reality -- rather than a problem looming on the horizon. WeatherDB, a weather data site by Graphiq, breaks down climate change into five charts illustrating three of the major players in the complicated climate change web: temperature, carbon dioxide and water.
Posted — UpdatedWhether or not you believe that climate change is caused by humans, the numbers tell a convincing story of a planet rapidly changing, and heating up.
Almost 2 degrees? That's barely noticeable at all, some may think. Can these small numbers really make a global impact? Science answers with a definitive yes.
What is causing this spike in temperature? Carbon dioxide, a naturally occurring greenhouse gas which is also emitted by the combustion of fossil fuels, is the suspected culprit.
On one hand, carbon dioxide is essential to our planet. Without this simple pairing of carbon and oxygen, the planet would be at least 33 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than it is today. Carbon dioxide keeps the planet at comfortable temperatures by trapping radiated heat from the Earth's surface and re-radiating it back toward the surface.
However, it takes more and more energy to fuel the lives of the 7 billion people on this planet. We are emitting CO2 into the atmosphere whether we are eating, driving, working — or even standing still. CO2 levels in our atmosphere have steadily been on the rise since recording began in 1958, but scientists can go much further back in time by looking at the carbon dioxide concentration in Antarctic ice. The last 100 years have seen an unprecedented spike in CO2 levels, particularly since automobiles have become a staple in the developed world.
There is another compound seriously affected by climate change — H2O. Water covers 70 percent of the Earth's surface and while droughts could restrict our supply of fresh water, melting ice is causing sea levels to rise.
Of course, all this ice needs somewhere to go. It is melting — sometimes inmassive sheets — into the ocean. Rising ocean levels could force the 1 billion people living in coastal areas from their homes and cities to be seriously damaged. Large cities including Miami, Los Angeles and New York could be underwater within the next century if sea levels continue to rise, according to Climate Central. If all the ice in both ice caps melted,projections show that most of Florida, London and Denmark would be totally immersed in water.
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