Is climate change real?

Is climate change real? I'll pull the latest scientific evidence to show you what the data says.

Yes, according to the overwhelming scientific evidence and consensus, climate change is real and happening now.

Scientific Consensus

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth is warming and that human activities, especially the emission of greenhouse gases, are the primary cause. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and primarily caused by human activities.

Reviews find that most commonly cited figures are ~97% among publishing climate experts, and literature-only analyses have found agreement exceeding 99%. A 2019 review found the consensus on the cause of climate change to be at 100%, and a 2021 study concluded that over 99% of scientific papers agree on the human cause.

Major scientific assessments state this clearly. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said: "Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact."

A recent IPCC report confirms, with "unequivocal" certainty, that the climate change is driven by human-sourced greenhouse gas pollution.

Evidence

NASA states: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.

> While Earth's climate has changed throughout its history, the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.

Key evidence includes:

•Global Temperature Rise: The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and other human activities. According to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.1° Celsius (1.9° Fahrenheit) since 1880. The majority of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15 to 0.20°C per decade.

•Rate of Change: This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.

•Multiple Independent Signs: Scientific information taken from natural sources (such as ice cores, rocks, and tree rings) and from modern equipment (like satellites and instruments) all show the signs of a changing climate. From global temperature rise to melting ice sheets, the evidence of a warming planet abounds.

Other compelling evidence documented by NASA includes:

•The ocean has absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 100 meters showing warming since 1969

•The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass

•Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska, and Africa

•Satellite observations reveal that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades

•Global sea level rose about 8 inches (20 centimeters) in the last century. The rate in the last two decades, however, is nearly double that of the last century

•Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades

•The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950

•Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30%

In short, Earth's climate has always changed naturally due to factors like variations in Earth's orbit, but the current warming trend since the mid-20th century is different because it is clearly the result of human activities and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia.

Citations (1)

1nasa.govGovernment
Climate Change - NASA Science
Backs: “Evidence. NASA states: There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.”