Causes Of Climate Change

Climate change is a large-scale, long-term shift in the planet’s weather patterns or average temperatures. Various factors are responsible for this change like variations in solar radiation received by Earth, variations in Earth’s orbit and tilt, volcanic eruptions, continental shifts, and biotic processes. But more recently, since the advent of Industrial revolution in the 18th-19th century, certain human activities like burning of fossil fuels releasing CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere altering its gaseous composition, cutting down of forests, change in land use patterns, and addition of solid and liquid aerosols into the atmosphere through anthropogenic pollution has led to an accelerated change in these weather patterns.

Global average temperatures have risen by around 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C in the period 1880 to 2012 . Moreover, the rate of rise is showing an upward trend . This temperature elevation has led to various short and long term environmental effects like global sea level rise of around 3.2 millimetres per year over last 20 years , retreat of glaciers and declining Arctic ice cover , acidification of oceans and extreme weather patterns like droughts, tropical cyclones, severe heat waves , and torrential rains. Recent report indicates that climate change might even have led to a delay of next ice age by 100,000 years