80 Climate Change: what do we know?

  • The climate is warming: no doubts about it! Based on observation data!

  • More than 100 years of warming in atmosphere

  • Global increase in sea temperature, widespread melting of snow, glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost melting; global sea level rise

  • Referred to as global warming (meaning that no other possibilities exist!). Can we get colder again?

  • 90% probability that humans are responsible (starting from Industrial Revolution era, late 19th century)

  • Changes in atmosphere are linked with lithosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere

Sea-level Variations:

This is a global geologic  phenomenon! Last 24,000 years!

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise

 

See below data sets and statistical analyses of variations in sea level from 30,000 calendar years.

Note that the range varies from over 150 m (panel A) to 60 cm (panel B), 30 cm (panel C), and over 5 m (panels D, E).

 

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Source: Miller, K.G., W.J. Schmelz, J.V. Browning, R.E. Kopp, G.S. Mountain, and J.D. Wright. 2020. Ancient sea level as key to the future. Oceanography 33(2):32–41, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2020.224.

 

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Geology 101 for Lehman College (CUNY) Copyright © by Yuri Gorokhovich and Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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