Human activities have released large amounts of carbon dioxide and other green house gases into the atmosphere over the last 100 years. Human activities such as deforestation, agricultural practices and industrial processes have emitted gases into the atmosphere. Humans extract and burn fossil fuels such as coal or petroleum that causes the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Another human-cause of climate change is clearing forests, it releases large amounts of carbon dioxide, deforestation means there wont be as many trees to absorb the extra carbon dioxide. Natural causes of climate change include variations in the sun’s energy reaching earth and changes in the reflectivity of the Earth’s atmosphere and surface. Also, changes in the greenhouse gas effect is a cause of climate change because it affects the amount of heat retained by Earth’s atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions discharge carbon dioxide and they emit volcanic ash or dust and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere contributing to the causes of climate change. Also, El Niño is an oscillation of the ocean and atmosphere system in the tropical area of the Pacific Ocean that affects global climate change also. Another natural cause is orbital changes in the earth, changes in the earth’s orbit and tilt cause the climate fluctuations that …show more content…
There are several changes that are being predicted. There is high scientific evidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades into the future because of green house gases being produced by human activities. Scientists have concluded from research that a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century will occur. The future is predicted to have ocean acidification, over the past century the ocean water acidity has increased around 30 percent due to humans admitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the ocean is increasing by two billion tons per year. The amount of spring snow cover in the northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and the snow is melting earlier then it should and this is expected to continue in the future. Extreme events such as record high temperature events have been increasing and record low temperatures have been decreasing, this is predicted to continue as well. Scientists expect glacial retreats to rise, art sea ice to decline, ice sheets to melt at a faster pace, oceans to warm and sea levels to rise in the future because of global climate