In 2018, carbon dioxide levels reached 411 parts per million at Hawaii's Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, the highest monthly average ever recorded. It can linger in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Major greenhouse gases and sourcesĬarbon dioxide (CO 2): Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas, responsible for about three-quarters of emissions. Governments and organizations around the world such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body that tracks the latest climate change science, are measuring greenhouse gases, tracking their impacts, and implementing solutions. But what is causing this change? And how does the rising temperature affect the environment, and our lives? Climate change encompasses not only the rising average temperatures we refer to as global warming but also extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and and habitats, rising seas, and a range of other impacts. Today, climate change is the term scientists use to describe the complex shifts, driven by greenhouse gas concentrations, that are now affecting our planet’s weather and climate systems. Hansen testified to Congress that “The greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now.'

Nearly a century later, American climate scientist James E. In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius was the first to link a rise in carbon dioxide gas from burning fossil fuels with a warming effect. The roots of the greenhouse effect concept lie in the 19th century, when French mathematician Joseph Fourier calculated in 1824 that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere. That trapping of heat is known as the greenhouse effect. The gases absorb solar energy and keep heat close to Earth's surface, rather than letting it escape into space. Greenhouse gas levels are so high primarily because humans have released them into the air by burning fossil fuels. But those gases are now out of balance and threaten to change drastically which living things can survive on this planet-and where.Ītmospheric levels of carbon dioxide-the most dangerous and prevalent greenhouse gas-are at the highest levels ever recorded.

By trapping heat from the sun, greenhouse gases have kept Earth's climate habitable for humans and millions of other species.

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