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In common usage, climate change describes global warming —the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate.
This has led to increases in mean global temperature, or global warming. The likely range of human-induced surface-level air warming by 2010–2019 compared to levels in 1850–1900 is 0.8 °C to 1.3 °C, with a best estimate of 1.07 °C. This is close to the observed overall warming during that time of 0.9 °C to 1.2 °C.
The global warming potential (GWP) is defined as an "index measuring the radiative forcing following an emission of a unit mass of a given substance, accumulated over a chosen time horizon, relative to that of the reference substance, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). The GWP thus represents the combined effect of the differing times these substances ...
Some climate change effects: wildfire caused by heat and dryness, bleached coral caused by ocean acidification and heating, environmental migration caused by desertification, and coastal flooding caused by storms and sea level rise. Effects of climate change are well documented and growing for Earth's natural environment and human societies.
Global warming is an aspect of modern climate change, a term that also includes the observed changes in precipitation, storm tracks and cloudiness. As a consequence, glaciers worldwide have been found to be shrinking significantly .
Such measurements furthered understanding of the greenhouse effect that underlies global warming and climate change. The history of the scientific discovery of climate change began in the early 19th century when ice ages and other natural changes in paleoclimate were first suspected and the natural greenhouse effect was first identified.
The current scientific consensus regarding causes and mechanisms of climate change, its effects and what should be done about it ( climate action) is that: It is "unequivocal" and "incontrovertible" that the greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have caused warming on land, in oceans and in the troposphere.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. [1] The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) set up the IPCC in 1988.