The current state of climate change is dire, global warming is increasing at an alarming rate over the past decades/millennia. Earth orbiting satellites and other technological advances have recently shed light and have aided scientist in seeing just how bad the situation has become.
What are the facts?
So what exactly causes global warming? This occurs as a result of Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases causes the Earth to warm. According an article by NASA, the average surface temperature has risen 0.9 degrees celsius since the late 19th century – 2016 being the warmest year ever recorded. As a result, we are seeing a loss of ice mass, Greenland having lost an average of 281 billion tons of ice, Antartica 119 billion tons, per year between 1993 and 2016. Snow cover in the northern hemisphere has decreased over the past 5 decades, and are melting earlier. Another very scary phenomenon are the global rise in sea level, by 8 inches, with the rate accelerating in the last two decades with the number of recorded high temperature events increasing.
(Pic: courtesy of NASA)
This has seen a effort from governments all over the world to collaborate and come up with progressive regulations and plans to reduce emissions in a bid to claw back the damage that’s being down to earth’s atmosphere.
