Causes of Climate Change

Key Points Both natural and human factors change Earth’s climate. Before humans, changes in climate resulted entirely from natural causes such as changes in Earth’s orbit, changes in solar activity, or volcanic eruptions. Earth’s temperature is a balancing act Earth’s temperature depends on the balance between energy entering and leaving the planet’s system . View enlarged image Models that account only for the effects of natural processes are not able to explain the warming over the past century. Changes in the greenhouse effect, which affects the amount of heat retained by Earth’s atmosphere Variations in the sun’s energy reaching Earth Changes in the reflectivity of Earth’s atmosphere and surface These factors have caused Earth’s climate to change many times. The historical record shows that the climate system varies naturally over a wide range of time scales. Recent climate changes, however, cannot be explained by natural causes alone. Radiative Forcing View enlarged image References:

untitled It’s simple, really: As long as we pour CO2; into the atmosphere faster than nature drains it out, the planet warms. And that extra carbon takes a long time to drain out of the tub. A fundamental human flaw, says John Sterman, impedes action on global warming. Sterman is not talking about greed, selfishness, or some other vice. Plants, oceans, and rocks all drain carbon from the atmosphere, but as climatologist David Archer explains in his book The Long Thaw, those drains are slow. Most of Sterman’s students—and his results have been replicated at other universities—didn’t understand that, at least not when the problem was described in the usual climate jargon. File:Cloudseedingimagerevised.jpg File:Ceres 2003 2004 clear sky total sky albedo.png

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