Everything about Climate change
Human-caused changes to climate on Earth
Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. In a broader sense, climate change also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The modern-day rise in global temperatures is driven by human activities, especially fossil fuel burning since the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices release greenhouse gases. These gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight, warming the lower atmosphere. Earth's atmosphere now has roughly 50% more carbon dioxide, the main gas driving global warming, than it did at the end of the pre-industrial era, reaching levels not seen for millions of years. Wikipedia →
🧭 Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: Climate changeA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: A review of the global climate change impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measuresInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: The Sheep Look UpThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systemsCited 9,484 times
- Go sideways: Causes of climate changeA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Representative Concentration PathwayA closely related topic
📖 Definitions
Noun Natural large-scale and long-term change in the Earth's climatic system, as brought about by ice ages.
Noun Rapid, large-scale, and long-term change in the Earth's climatic system produced by global warming; anthropogenic climate change.
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems
Ecological responses to recent climate change
Soil Carbon Sequestration Impacts on Global Climate Change and Food Security
A global overview of drought and heat-induced tree mortality reveals emerging climate change risks for forests
Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change
Extinction risk from climate change
Temperature sensitivity of soil carbon decomposition and feedbacks to climate change
The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment
🆕 Influential since 2022
A review of the global climate change impacts, adaptation, and sustainable mitigation measures
Renewable energy and climate change
Firm‐Level Climate Change Exposure
Climate change impacts on plant pathogens, food security and paths forward
Global and Regional Trends and Drivers of Fire Under Climate Change
📚 Books worth reading
The Sheep Look UpJohn Brunner · 1972
This Changes EverythingNaomi Klein · 2013
How to Avoid a Climate DisasterBill Gates · 2019
Time of feast, times of famineEmmanuel Le Roy Ladurie · 1967
Anthropology and climate changeSusan Alexandra Crate, Mark Nuttall · 2009
On fireNaomi Klein, Jordi Boixadós · 2019
The Uninhabitable EarthDavid Wallace-Wells · 2019
The Future We ChooseChristiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac · 2020
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
🔗 Related topics
- Causes of climate change The scientific community has been investigating the causes of current climate change for decades. After thousands of studies, the scientific consensus…
- Representative Concentration Pathway Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) are climate change scenarios to project future greenhouse gas concentrations. These pathways (or trajectories)…
- IPCC Fifth Assessment Report The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the fifth in a series of such reports and was…
- Global warming potential Global warming potential (GWP) is a measure of how much heat a greenhouse gas (GHG) traps in the atmosphere over a specific time period, relative to carbon…
- Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (SR15) was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 8 October 2018. The report…
- Greenhouse gas Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the gases in an atmosphere that trap heat, raising the surface temperature of astronomical bodies such as Earth. Unlike other…
- Climate sensitivity Climate sensitivity is a key measure in climate science and describes how much Earth's surface will warm in response to a doubling of the atmospheric carbon…
- Greenhouse gas emissions Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions) from human activities intensify the greenhouse effect which contributes to climate change. Carbon dioxide (CO2)…