Climate Change

Climate change has been identified as one of the greatest threats facing the living systems of the planet. Although the global climate varies naturally, and has shown considerable direction change over periods of decades, millennia or even geological timescales the rates of change have generally been slow.

Since the industrial revolution, the Earth's atmosphere has seen dramatic changes which can largely be linked to human activites. Most notably these have included a 31% increase in levels of carbon dioxide, such that concentrations are now higher than they have been, probably for over 20 million years. These changes can be linked to the widespread burning of fossil fuels, with further CO2 release linked to deforestation and other changes to the vegetation structure of the planet.

These high levels of CO2, together with other gases such as methane help to trap radiation from the earth's surface, preventing it from escaping the atmosphere and thus creating an overall heating effect, known as the ' greenhouse effect'. This heating has further knock on impacts, including changes in wind, precipitation, ocean currents and sea level. Sea level rise is cause by a combination of thermal expansion and the melting of ice- caps on land. From the perspective of coasts and oceans, human induced climate change includes changes to temperatures, water movements, sea level and even the ocean chemistry.