Differences between global warming and climate change

The terms “global warming” and “climate change” are often used interchangeably. In scientific literature, climate change and global warming are inseparable, even if there are different phenomena. The simplest explanation of this connection is that global warming is the main cause of changes in our current climate.

Here, we define both of these concepts, explain how it is measured and examined and explain the connection between them.

What is global warming?

Inter -Government Climate Change Panel (IPCC) described global warming as “the average of the world and an increase in average surface air and sea surface temperatures for 30 years”. For more than a century, research has been conducted to measure and determine the exact causes of global warming.

Measurements throughout history

The average surface temperature of the Earth rose and fell in the history of our planet. The most complete global temperature recordings that scientists have a high level of confidence dates back to 1880. Prior to 1880, observations come from farmers and scientists who recorded their first and last frosts in their daily temperatures, precipitation measurements and personal diaries at the beginning of the 17th century. It was found that these data were usually correct compared to instrumental data.

Paleoclimatologists (scientists studying old climates) for long -term data, historical variations in pollen counts, progression and withdrawal of mountain glaciers, ice seeds, rock, tree rings and chemical decomposition, coastline changes, lake sediments and other “proxy data”.

Scientists constantly improve the accuracy and interpretation of the recorded data. Temperature records vary according to the region, altitude, instruments and other factors, but the more we approach the present, the more scientists are about the realities of global warming.

For example, natural events, such as asteroid effects and major volcanic explosions, may have dramatic effects on global temperatures, which can lead to mass extinction. Cyclic changes in the world of the Earth by sun Milankovitch loopsIt can affect global temperatures and have long-term effects on the climate for thousands of years-but they do not explain short-term changes that have witnessed in the last 150 years.

Indeed, for the present period, a model of data emerges: the average temperature of the Earth has increased much faster than any past warming in the last 50 years.

Greenhouse Effect

Starting from the middle of the 19th century, scientists began to define changes in carbon dioxide concentrations as a leading cause of global temperature changes. In 1856, American physicist Eunice Foote was the first to show how carbon dioxide absorbed solar radiation. “This gas will give a high temperature to our world ği is a widespread understanding of the reasons for global warming, which is now known as the greenhouse effect among scientists. In other words, more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere cause a warmer climate. Foote’s contribution was left in a short time after three years, the Irish physicist John Tyndall, who was generally loan by defining the greenhouse effect.

By 1988, James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Research Institute, can express “highly confidence ına to the US Congress that there is a“ cause and effect relationship ”between greenhouse influence and observed heating. Hansen was talking about the latest global warming, but the “high confidence” is also valid for Paleoclimatology. In their presence, since the emergence of life in the world, carbon -based life forms have changed the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Human -welded reasons

People have caused the fastest and fastest changes in global temperatures. Since the 1988 statement of James Hansen, the level of confidence in the anthropogenic causes of global warming has grew unanimously in the science community.

These anthropogenic causes are not new. At an early date like 1800, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt observed how the forests raised regional atmospheric temperatures. Just like forest fires are releasing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere today, controlled burns have been an additional source of carbon for centuries.

However, these traditional practices are cüce with the development of coal -powered steam engine with the number of greenhouse gas spread since the end of the 18th century. Coal burning expanded in the 19th century, grew by 50% by 1950, doubled between 1950 and 2000, and then doubled between 2000 and 2015. Between 1880 and 2015, followed a faster growth curve, then grew more between 50% and 2015, increasing the end of 1995.

First of all, the fossil fuel burning, which emits the greenhouse gases of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen oxide, may have peaked in 2017, but in 2021, the world may have made up 82% of its primary energy use.

Parallel growth of fossil fuel consumption and the increase in global surface temperatures are striking. Greenhouse gas emissions have risen to “at least in the last 800,000 years unseen” andextremely possible It is the dominant cause of the warming that has been observed since the middle of the 20th century. ”

A simple way to understand how fossil fuels contribute to global warming is to think about a blanket. The burning fossil fuel surrounded the world into a pollution blanket that caught heat. The more fossil fuel we burn, the thick the blanket and the more heat can be stuck.

What is climate change?

The climate is the weather for a long time. Changes in the climate caused by human -based global warming are to have long -term effects and will continue. These effects, which once thought to occur in the near future, are increasingly visible today, the most prominent is changes in air patterns. However, thinner changes in all ecosystems also pose a very serious threat.

Excessive air

Global warming, natural disasters, both intensity and frequency “in recent years, has made the air more wild and more unstable. Forest fires, fatal heat waves, droughts, floods, tropical storms, hurricanes, snow storms and avalanches “once in the century” natural disasters have seen a 10 -fold increase since 1960.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, in the last 50 years, half of all the disasters recorded and 74% of the relevant economic losses are due to floods such as floods.

To attribute the weather to climate change

It is often difficult to connect a particular excessive weather to global warming. The natural variability in the climate is responsible for short -term changes in air patterns, especially at regional levels. However, the long -term model of the weather events reveals the hand of climate change.

What can be attributed to global warming is a change in which warmer oceans and warmer air increases the probability and density of drought, heat waves, storms, hurricanes and other extreme weather events. The attribution of excessive events is more likely to be more likely than certainness, given that the conditions included in the involved conditions generally do not have historical precedent.

However, by comparing existing extreme events with historical events with different densities and different atmospheric conditions, scientists can give more and more meticulous explanations for the role of global warming in extreme weather conditions.

Although there is often disagreement about the level of the impact of climate change on a single extreme event in the science community, there is a solid agreement that human -based climate change plays a pioneering role.

Threats to ecosystems

It is the threat to ecosystems that are more deadly than natural disasters, climate change for ecosystems that support life. Species that try to adapt to the changing climate often fail.

For example, coral absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide and becomes increasingly acidic. When the peat areas and coastal wetlands dry due to increasing temperatures, the dead vegetation decomposes faster and releases greenhouse gases and contributes to a “stepped effect ğı in which one disaster contributes to another. Already ongoing climatic -oriented “overturning points” lead to great losses in biological diversity and weaken all ecosystems.

Climate change research still involves unknown and uncertainties. Understanding the past is easier to predict the future of the physical and biological systems of the entire planet. Nevertheless, the main uncertainty is less about the social science of climate change and how people react to it.