Climate change is the biggest environmental challenge facing the world today.
What is climate change?
Climate change refers to changes in the earth’s temperature over the last 100 years. Since 1900, the average temperature on the planet has increased by 0.74 degrees Celsius and the UK’s sea level has risen by about 10cm.
What causes climate change?
Though changes in the climate have occurred naturally in the past, human activity is the cause of the current climate changes, through increased emissions of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides and water vapour occur naturally in the atmosphere. However human activities such as burning fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and oil), agriculture and deforestation, cause these gases to build up in the atmosphere and the temperature to rise. There is a huge body of evidence to support this, especially from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a renowned group of scientists from all the major nations in the world.
What are the effects of climate change?
Though climate change is a global problem, with changes in greenhouse gases anywhere in the world affecting the global climate system as a whole, it is a problem that needs to be tackled at all levels. The effects of climate changes have major variations in different parts of the world. In Cambridgeshire climate change will bring hotter, drier summers; warmer, wetter winters; more storms and downpours; and rising sea-levels.
For further information on climate change follow the links on the right-hand side.