The Earth 's Atmosphere Has Changed All Through History

In the last 100 years, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased, causing the Earth to warm by an average of 0.6 degrees celsius, largely a result of burning fossil fuels for energy, transportation, and land use changes increased for food production. The basic science is straightforward and climate researchers have shown that gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and others can trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a phenomenon known as the greenhouse effect. Human activities such as industry, transport, energy generation and deforestation all produce these greenhouse gases. In the last 20 years, concern has grown that global warming is inevitable and now considered most probably caused by man-made increases in

Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. This body of data, collected over many years, reveals the signals of a changing climate.

We all know that atmosphere is continually evolving. We have had ice ages and hotter periods when gators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have happened in a hundred thousand year cycles for the last 700 thousand years. There also have been time periods that seemed to have been hotter than the present in spite of CO2 levels being lower than they are currently. Overall what I am saying is that we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. Because of these evolutions there has been different effects on the earth.

Scientists have given numerous warnings that human-caused, or anthropogenic, climate change is not only occurring now, but accelerating more quickly than predicted (Maibach, Myers, and Leiserowitz 295). Global warming contributes to climate change as a result of the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (“Global Warming”). The level of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere has increased significantly over the years. Patterns of warming are sufficient to conclude that this increase has coincided with the start of the Industrial Revolution (“Global Warming”). By analyzing carbon dioxide pockets that have been trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists can assuredly confirm the correlation between recent warming

Once the idea that climate change was happening was more mainstream and not dismissed, another scientist picked up Fourier’s theory. He proposed the idea that carbon dioxide could be what was trapping the heat, and also that water vapor is good at trapping heat. Although, this did not explain why the Earth was so warm. The idea was again visited later on, but this time Svante Arrhenius discovered that a certain amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere equals a certain amount of warmth. This trend continued for years, scientists discovering new things about the atmosphere. How did the ice ages happen? How much carbon dioxide can the atmosphere handle? These were questions scientists have asked.

The Earth has changed many times over the billions of years that it has existed. Tectonic plates have moved, colliding to create or combine continents, and life has evolved to adapt to the changing planet. As scientists have studied how the Earth has changed over time, we have discovered many important events, such as when eras and periods ended, giving clues about what life was like on the planet during those times. As it is harder to learn about the extremely distant past, we have discovered more events closer to the present day.

The first argument examined on the man-made global warning side is that increasing greenhouse gases caused by human activities is causing directly observed climate changes. The first resulting climate change discussed is warming global surface temperature. There has been an increase in global surface temperature of 0.74 degrees C since the late 19th century. In the last 50 years alone the temperature has increased by 0.13 degrees C per decade. North America and Eurasia have seen the largest increase in warmth. However, some areas of the earth have actually cooled some this past century (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para6). After the mid 20th century 70% of the global land mass saw reduced diurnal temperatures. From 1979 to 2005 the maximum and minimum temperatures have shown no change; both indicate warming (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para10). Furthermore, borehole temperatures, snow cover, and glacier recession data all seem to agree with recent warming (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para11).

Extreme climate change is crucial to understand and prominently discovering resolutions is essential to better our environment. This is calculated by the reading of satellites and several other forms of measurements. The two different remarks made from the 19th century and the 1950s era, concluded the various prolonged transformations on the ocean, air and terrestrial surface. It has been proven over the years the warming of the surface has occurred, nonetheless the whole earth had experienced this warming. The last thirty years has been the warmest time era in comparison to the last fourteen hundred years. It has been noticed not only the warming of the surface of the land but also the decline of snow, upsurge of sea altitudes and gas concentration.

Climate change is influenced by the greenhouse effect which is the increase of Carbon dioxide, Methane, Ozone and Nitrogen Oxide. On one hand, the presence of these gases in the atmosphere make the earth habitable with respect to regulating the earth’s temperature. However, an increase in the concentration of these gases results in trapping energy in the atmosphere and this in turn increases earth’s temperature. “Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70% between

Earth’s climate can be observed as an ever changing continuum throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, the end of the last ice age occurring about 11,700 years ago. With climate change being a seemingly characteristic and even beneficial quality of Earth (the end of the ice age did mark the beginning of the modern climate era fit to sustain human civilization after all) it may be easy to disregard the significance of the current period of climate change our planet is in. However, most of the climate changes that occurred before the one beginning around 1950 were attributed to variations in the Earth’s orbit that affect the amount of solar energy received by it. The current

Earth is an immeasurably complex planet, and the processes that make it so are equally as intricate. It is this same intricacy, however, that makes the Earth so vulnerable to even the slightest variation in overall temperature or change within the gases that which compose the atmosphere. What We Know About Climate Change by Kerry Emanuel aims to address this issue of Earth’s vulnerability head-on as it suggests the plausible causes for the undeniable planetary warming observed in the last century all the while proposing pragmatic solutions to discontinue the unnatural processes credited with the abnormal warming.

Current data reveals that the concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is approximately 387 parts per million, which is roughly a 31% increase in the period 1750 to 2009. Consequently, it is evident that such increases in temperatures have caused a warmer planet (7). It is also evident that it is impossible to reverse the developments of industrial revolution. This means that as the advancements of industrial revolution continue and as energy demands increases, it is possible that this trend of climate change will continue for decades to come (McAloon, 8). The consent of the climate research community is that it most likely already affects climate noticeably and will compel significant

The report concludes, again with “high confidence”, that anthropogenic (human caused) warming has had a discernible influence on many of our planets physical and biological systems. While there are limitations and gaps in the knowledge available, particularly from undeveloped countries, the knowledge available allowed the group to attribute most of the observed increase in the globally averaged temperature since the mid-20th century to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. The analysis was necessarily limited in the number of systems and locations considered. In addition, natural temperature variability is larger at the regional than at the global scale, thus affecting identification of changes due to external forcing and at the regional scale other factors such as land-use change and pollution, are an environmental

Much like the glass of a greenhouse, gases in our atmosphere sustain life on Earth by trapping the sun 's heat. The Earth’s atmosphere contains several different gases that act like a blanket, keeping the Earth warm. Water vapour and some trace gases like CO2, CH4 (methane), O3 (ozone), N2O (nitrous oxide), are “IR active”, i.e. they absorb heat energy, and stop the warmth from escaping into space. Without the entrapment of heat, the earth’s mean temperature would be -180 C and life, as we know it today, would not be possible. These gases are present in the atmosphere in tiny quantities compared to the amounts of oxygen and nitrogen. But even a small change in the concentration of these gases may create an effect that could change our

The issue of global warming should be on the list of our top priorities. Studies show that the average of global temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution began. Since the Industrial Revolution, human emissions has quadrupled the frequency of certain heat extremes and many scientists have warned that a failure to bring greenhouse gases under control could eventually lead to a 62-fold increase in extreme heat blasts (Gillis Justin A17). Most of the increase is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These activities contribute to a build-up in carbon dioxide and other gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The Earth’s atmosphere is made of gases like nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen. These gases act as a blanket that covers and gives us warmth, but once these gases such as carbon dioxide absorbs heat, but does not release it back into space in which causes the increase in global temperature. This is called the greenhouse effect because it only traps heat but does not release it.