Climate Change

RESPECT: CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time. Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions (more or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have also been identified as significant causes of recent climate change, often referred to as "global warming".

Life affects climate through its role in the carbon and water cycles and such mechanisms as albedo, evapotranspiration, cloud formation, and weathering. Examples of how life may have affected past climate include: glaciation 2.3 billion years ago triggered by the evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis, glaciation 300 million years ago ushered in by long-term burial of decomposition-resistant detritus of vascular land plants (forming coal),  termination of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum 55 million years ago by flourishing marine phytoplankton,  reversal of global warming 49 million years ago by 800,000 years of arctic azolla blooms, and global cooling over the past 40 million years driven by the expansion of grass-grazer ecosystems.

Human activities have contributed also to the growing concern of climate change. This is by burning plastics, in factories and from using different vehicles. All of these have increased the greenhouse effect and caused the Earth’s surface temperature to rise.