Over a century of mean temperature data plotted over time demonstrates the increasing rate of the rise.
The pace of change is immediately obvious, especially over the past few decades.
— Ed Hawkins
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| by Ed Hawkins, National Centre for Atmospheric Science |
Humans have spiked a 40% increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration since 1750, the approximate outset of the industrial revolution.
Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons are the greenhouse gases in order of abundance in the atmosphere. The anthropogenic spike in greenhouse gases comes primarily from human activities (power generation, transportation, and industrial agriculture).
“Thus human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future. Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years.”
― Bill McKibben
REFERENCES
- 2015 Shatters Hottest Year Mark; 2016 Hot on its Heels? by Andrea Thompson, 20 January 2016, Climate Central.
- Greenhouse Gas, Wikipedia.
- HadCRUT4.4, Temperature data from Jan 1850 – Mar 2016.
- Spiralling global temperatures, Ed Hawkins, Climate Lab Book.
- See Earth's Temperature Spiral Toward 2°C, by Andrea Thompson, 11 May 2016, Climate Central.
- The Global Warming Reader: A Century of Writing about Climate Change, Bill McKibben, OR Books 2011.
