“The greatest threat to the future of humankind is not a nuclear holocaust, a conflict between the US and China, or terrorism, but rather the global climate change.”
Currently, it is the most significant environmental problem that the world is facing. The panic over the climate change is increasing day by day with the wildfire and floods occurring across the globe. During the past century, the human activities have been released large amount of Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into atmosphere. There are climate changes that are inescapable and nothing can be done about the same. Carbon dioxide can stay in the atmosphere for a century and continue to make earth warmer.
Mauna Lao Observatory in Hawaii has been measuring the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since 1958. CO2 has risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 415 ppm in 2021. The second most important greenhouse gas Methane, has risen from a level of 722 parts per billion to 1,866 in 2019. According to a report in October 2020, Scientists have seen a significant amount of methane being released from the area of the Arctic Ocean where the continental shelf is only 30 metres below the surface. Many of them have regarded this as the start of the irreversible climate change.
Number of different organisations monitor and measure the global temperature across the globe and collects the data accordingly. According to the recent studies and findings the increase in temperature across the globe is not evenly distributed. Air heats up quicker than water, so air temperatures over land are rising quicker than sea surface temperatures. The greatest temperature changes are being witnessed at the poles as the melting of sea-ice allows greater heat absorption by the oceans.
According to the Prediction by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess climate change based on the latest science is the melting of the ice caps is coming dangerously true. As per the data by IPCC, the ice is melting at 8,500 metric tonnes per second currently which has led to a Sea-level rise (SLR). This wasn’t supposed to happen until cities and countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam among the others.
As climate change doesn’t affect any single country or continent it becomes more and more important to increase cooperation among the countries to fight and stop them. The COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference will be hosted by the UK with Italy from 31 October to 12 November 2021 in the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, UK. This conference will surely make an attempt to bring together the countries from across the globe to stop the climate change from happening. In conclusion, there is a need to take part and try to stop global warming and other effects on climate change. If the earth’s temperature continues to rise in the future, living things on earth would become impossible.
