Climate change
Max Martin
Elements of fieldwork
16082024
Weather and climate
• Weather refers to atmospheric conditions that occur locally over short
periods of time—from minutes to hours or days. Familiar examples
include rain, snow, clouds, winds, floods, or thunderstorms.
• Climate, on the other hand, refers to the long-term (usually at least 30
years) regional or even global average of temperature, humidity, and
rainfall patterns over seasons, years, or decades.
Climate change
• Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns
that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates.
These changes have a broad range of observed effects that are
synonymous with the term.
• Changes observed in Earth’s climate since the mid-20th century are
driven by human activities, particularly fossil fuel burning, which
increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere,
raising Earth’s average surface temperature.
Natural processes
• Natural processes, can also contribute to climate change, including
internal variability
• (E.g., cyclical ocean patterns like El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation) and external forcings (e.g., volcanic
activity, changes in the Sun’s energy output, variations in Earth’s
orbit).
Climate variability
• A greater aspect of our weather and climate is its variability.
This variability ranges over many time and space scales such
as localized thunderstorms and tornadoes, to larger-scale
storms, to droughts, to multi-year, multi-decade and even
multi-century time scales.
Climate variability
• Some examples of this longer time-scale variability might include
a series of abnormally mild or exceptionally severe winters, and
even a mild winter followed by a severe winter. Such
year-to-year variations in the weather patterns are often
associated with changes in the wind, air pressure, storm tracks,
and jet streams that enclose areas far larger than that of your
particular region.
• At times, the year-to-year changes in weather patterns are
linked to specific weather, temperature, and rainfall patterns
occurring throughout the world due to the naturally occurring
phenomena known as El Niño and La Niña.
1.45°C
• The global mean temperature in 2023 was about 1.45°C above the
1850-1900 average.
• 2023 was the warmest year on record, because of long-term climate
change and the effect of 2023/2024 El Niño episode
90%
• The ocean absorbs approximately 90% of energy in the climate
system, warming it to record levels in 2023.
110mm (4.3 in)
• Global sea level increased to a new high in 2023, since the beginning
of the satellite altimetry measurement in 1993.
Our responsibility
• “Anthropogenic” or “human-induced climate change” results from human activities which
are already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the
globe. These can include:
•
• burning of fossil fuels,
• deforestation,
• land use and land use changes,
• livestock management,
• fertilisation,
• waste management, and
• industrial processes.
