Global warming and climate change: What's the difference?
This time, we're going to talk about a hot topic: climate change. Here, we'll discuss the effects of this phenomenon briefly and simply, as well as how it differs from another popular term: global warming.
By Roberto Diaz Blanco
Although the terms climate change and global warming are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not synonymous.
The evidence is obvious that the Earth is warming. Climate change is a word that is widely used to describe environmental devastation around the world.
Climate change - what is it?
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), any major change in climatic measurements that lasts for an extended length of time.
As a result, climate change encompasses considerable variations in temperature, precipitation, and wind patterns, among other things, over several decades or more.
How does global warming work?
It's important to distinguish between climate change and global warming. The latter refers to the recent and continuing rise in global mean temperature near the surface of the earth.
According to the EPA, "increases in the quantities of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere" are a major cause of global warming.
Weather patterns are also changing as a result of global warming.
Global warming is only one facet of the larger issue of climate change.
Is climate change real?
The Earth is heating up. The average temperature of the planet has risen more than 7ºC in the last century, according to data from the United States.
Scientists project that the average temperature will continue to increase between 1.1º and 6.4º in this century.
Although it appears to be only a few degrees, these small changes in temperature imply dangerous modifications in the climate.
Effects of climate change:
Rainfall has increased in several places, causing floods, while droughts have occurred in others. Heat waves are becoming more common, resulting in an increase in mortality as well as forest fires.
Warming and acidification of the oceans are occurring, while glaciers and poles are melting. As a result, sea levels are rising, and coastal cities are expected to be the hardest hit in the future years.
Climate change has economic consequences as well: it destroys crops and jeopardizes food production, and the increase in natural disasters has an influence on nations' Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The consulting firm Aon puts the economic thermometer on the natural disasters recorded in the world over the past year in its report "2021 Weather, Climate, and Catastrophes," and comes to a clear conclusion: the cost derived from meteorological phenomena amounted to 329,000 million dollars, making 2021 the third year with the highest volume of losses.
Why does climate change occur?
An imbalance in the Earth's temperature can be caused by a variety of natural and human-made factors.
– Changes in the greenhouse effect
– Variations in the amount of solar energy reaching the planet
– Changes in the atmosphere and surface's reflectivity
Natural causes can be used to explain climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Scientists, on the other hand, feel that the warming witnessed in the twentieth century was caused by human activities.
Industrial activities have released huge amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere throughout the last century.
The energy industry is responsible for the majority of these greenhouse gas emissions. However, they are also emitted by deforestation, various industrial operations, and even some agricultural practices.
How do greenhouse gasses work?
Greenhouse gasses act as a blanket around the planet, keeping the planet warm. This is a normal and necessary part of existence.
Excess greenhouse gasses, on the other hand, can alter the climate and be hazardous to ecosystems and human health.
Carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), water vapor (H2O), and ozone (O3) are the main "greenhouse gasses" in the earth's atmosphere. There are also a number of wholly man-made greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, such as halocarbons and other chlorine- and bromide-containing substances.
Infrared radiation emitted from the Earth's surface, the same atmosphere due to the same gasses, and clouds is absorbed by greenhouse gasses. The natural greenhouse effect is caused by greenhouse gasses trapping heat within the earth's troposphere. These greenhouse gasses, both naturally and anthropogenically produced, are prevalent in the atmosphere and absorb and emit radiation at specific wavelengths of the infrared spectrum radiated by the Earth's surface, atmosphere, and clouds.
How can we combat climate change?
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was established in the 1990s with the goal of raising public awareness of the concerns associated with this phenomenon.
The Kyoto Protocol, which established measures to prevent climate change, was signed around 1997.
Six years after signing the Paris Agreement, the Climate Summit was held in Glasgow (Scotland), with the goal of limiting global warming to 2°C (and, if possible, 1.5°C) above pre-industrial levels this century.
The United Nations (UN) and the technical organizations of Italy and the United Kingdom supported the Glasgow Climate Summit, which follows the postponement of the previous edition in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, each citizen can help the environment by limiting car use, cycling, unplugging appliances, and recycling, among other activities.
Climate change is unknown to 40% of the adult population of the world:
A survey looked at how people in 119 nations felt about climate change. Climate change is unknown to up to four out of ten people on the earth. Although, according to the study, this percentage has been rising in several nations as a result of more research on climate change knowledge and risk perception.
The study also identifies the factors that may cause people to perceive a higher or lower danger. The level of knowledge and awareness concerning climate change is frequently determined by factors such as educational attainment.
The study's findings suggest that the most developed countries have the best understanding of climate change in general. This, however, does not necessarily suggest that these countries have a higher risk perception.
Europe and Latin America the most aware
The study identifies Latin America and Europe as the regions where people are most aware of climate change, because they have a higher perception of the risk connected with it, in addition to a high percentage of knowledge. "When individuals in these two locations understand that humans are the primary driver of climate change," says Dr. Lee, "they tend to perceive climate change as a higher threat."
More than 75% of the population in Spain is aware that climate change is occurring.
Climate change is less well understood in underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia, where "the impression of risk is related with more tangible indicators, such as changes in local temperatures."
In the United States, there is an unusual situation in which the population is completely aware of climate change, with a percentage of more than 75%, yet risk perception is low, with less than 60%. According to Dr. Lee, "political polarization may have influenced this low-risk perception," since Republicans have consistently discounted the severity of contemporary climate change.
Conclusions:
Humans do contribute to climate change by releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but this is only one part of the whole. The climate of the Earth can change through time due to interactions between the atmosphere and numerous geologic, chemical, biological, and geographic elements, as well as changes in the atmosphere. A persistent period of high volcanic activity, for example, can modify regional climates (as well as the Earth's global climate). Much of this activity is linked to the shifting of Earth's tectonic plates, which propel continents across the planet's surface.
Continents clash with one another or break apart over hundreds of thousands to millions of years, altering the patterns of ocean currents and local winds. This has an impact on heat transmission from the tropics to the poles. The global climate of Earth has also changed as a result of dramatic changes in atmospheric chemistry, most notably the rise in oxygen concentrations billions of years ago, when plants, algae, and other photosynthesis-capable species began to spread across the planet.
The concrete repercussions of climate change induced by global warming—such as melting glaciers and ice caps, rising sea levels, and changes in seasonal temperature and rainfall patterns—are becoming the focus as the globe continues to grapple with how human activities influence Earth's climate. As such disruptions become more visible, more scientists are talking about them in terms of long-term climatic changes rather than just reflecting on the average temperature of the Earth. As a result, the cause-and-effect link between global warming and climate change can also be referred to as climate change. That is, it might refer to a change in the atmosphere's average condition as a result of global warming.
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