The climate crisis, along with the loss of biodiversity, is the greatest challenge our world is facing. Right now, rising global average temperatures are having a profound impact on our climate, and in the coming years, these effects will be even more severe.
We now have a chance to act and prevent further climate change. If we want to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, emissions of man-made greenhouse gases must be reduced by at least 50% by 2030, according to the IPCC. On this page, we summarize what the climate crisis is, what is causing it, and what you can do to prevent it.
What is climate change?
The climate is naturally variable. This variability is normal and is explained by many factors that interact with each other, such as changes in ocean currents, volcanic activity, solar radiation, major climate events such as El Niño, the Indian monsoon, etc.
Thus, climate change is a significant and long-term change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns. It can occur over a period of decades to millions of years. It can be changes in average weather patterns, such as the average start date of the wet season in the tropics, or changes in the frequency of extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, and storms.
Changes in the Earth’s orbital patterns, called Milankovitch cycles, are the most important driving force of climate change over periods of thousands to millions of years. They were the main driving force behind the last four cycles of ice ages and the warm periods in between. However, the Earth’s climate has changed dramatically over the past 150 years, and it is crucial that we understand what is causing the changes in such a short period of time.
Many studies have conclusively demonstrated that average global temperatures have been rising since the mid-1900s. This is popularly referred to as global warming, and the scientific consensus is that it is caused by human activity, primarily through the release of CO2 into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. Anthropogenic climate change, as it is often called, has been demonstrated to be a consensus among climate scientists.