Earth Science Stack Exchange
Earth Science Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [climate-change]

Questions about changes of the climate system, including questions about global warming.

671 questions
37
votes
6 answers

Is climate change a vicious circle?

My question refers to the current process of climate change. CO2 is rising, which leads to the greenhouse effect, which raises temperatures. This leads to more wildfires, which reduces number of trees, increasing CO2 and reducing CO2 capacity…
luchonacho
  • 756
  • 1
  • 6
  • 11
20
votes
4 answers

What is the 'natural variation' in global temperature that climate-change skeptics mention?

I was wondering if there really was some natural variation that keeps getting cited by climate-change skeptics that predicts a warming? The only such variation I can think of would be the milankovitch cycles, however this predicts cooling not…
AlexLipp
  • 1,715
  • 9
  • 23
19
votes
1 answer

Debunking scientific paper "Has global warming already arrived?"

I read the IPCC reports, I know global warming is happening and is man-made. But as any skeptic should do periodically, I went to a few climate deniers websites and stumbled upon this peer-reviewed scientific paper, published in "Journal of…
Frederic Conrotte
  • 301
  • 2
  • 5
17
votes
2 answers

Which places on Earth would be affected the least by severe climate change?

If I had the choice to move to an arbitrary region on the planet, which regions should I favour and which should I avoid in terms of habitability in face of the possibility of an extreme climate change?
Lenar Hoyt
  • 271
  • 2
  • 6
17
votes
10 answers

Why is global warming bad?

I had a discussion about this with my coworker. It appears that global warming (even up to +6K) has advantages: increased plant growth: increase in photosynthesis efficiency more water evaporation from oceans which will cause more rains even in dry…
avi9526
  • 295
  • 1
  • 4
16
votes
3 answers

Is 2015's record average temperature evidence that we are now experiencing runaway climate change?

2015 had the highest global temperatures on record, as discussed in this question, beating the last record ... in 2014. Are we now in a runaway climate change regime, where zero further human impact on the environment will not prevent change to…
christopherlovell
  • 459
  • 3
  • 9
12
votes
2 answers

Have there been any studies on how vehicles directly contribute to a rising global temperature?

I've tried searching for this myself, but Google is saturated with the Greenhouse Gases angle of Rising Global Temperatures. What I'm interested in is the following: Greenhouse gases aside, to what extent do automobiles directly contribute to a…
Aww_Geez
  • 221
  • 2
  • 6
11
votes
3 answers

What are some near term effects of Global Warming?

Many of the predictions of Global Warming models are dated in the range of ~100 years or more from the present. I'm wondering if any models or data provide predictions for the more immediate future, say $10$ - $20$ years from today. Specifically,…
Nathaniel Bubis
  • 827
  • 6
  • 11
10
votes
2 answers

Does clearing snow contribute to climate change?

I've been reflecting on climate change and pondering how much of it is truly man-made. Anyone who's shoveled a walkway know that the snow melts faster beside the walkway than it does in the middle of your yard. This is because you've exposed the…
ShemSeger
  • 625
  • 4
  • 11
10
votes
3 answers

Does this paper, using neural nets, prove industrialization is irrelevant to global warming?

Recently, a paper was published by Abbot and Morahasy (2017) - see specifically Fig. 2. The thesis of the paper is to train an artificial neural network (ANN) on the temperature time series for pre-industrial ages. Then do forecasting with the ANN…
DLV
  • 203
  • 1
  • 5
8
votes
1 answer

How does CO2 contribute to global warming?

CO2 is a common agent in fire extinguishers, which suppresses fire. How does this same chemical contribute to global warming when it also puts out fires?
Alex Mendoza
  • 91
  • 3
8
votes
4 answers

High albedo vs low albedo

Albedo is a measure of the amount of light reflected back by an object that is incident on it. So, high albedo means that a greater portion of light falling on something is reflected back. This also means a that greater amount of light goes back…
HARVEER RAWAT
  • 391
  • 2
  • 8
7
votes
2 answers

Why is runaway global warming a possibility despite all current fossil fuel deposits once having been in the atmosphere?

Disclaimer: this question is not about climate change or global warming in general, and does not try to dismiss general human-caused global warming. The concept of runaway global warming depicts a scenario where the climate enters an unstoppable…
vsz
  • 464
  • 3
  • 9
7
votes
1 answer

Is climate change homogenous globally

When searching for continental trends in climate I could not find clear sources broken down to regions or continents. My question is: is it proper to talk of global warming as a homogenous trend or is there actually a difference between trends when…
St.Clair Bij
  • 253
  • 1
  • 5
6
votes
1 answer

Above average global temperature in March 2016

The question arose when I heard from friends across many countries that March has never been so hot. I myself felt the same in my city (Bangalore, India). Then I tried searching on internet, and I found a link on NASA, which says March 2016 was…
Gaurav Singhal
  • 185
  • 4
1
2 3 4 5 6 7