Is climate change real?

Is climate change real? I'll pull the latest scientific evidence to answer you.

Yes, climate change is real - this is the established position of the science.

Multiple independent lines of evidence and every major scientific organization that studies the climate supports this conclusion.

Scientific consensus is overwhelming

> The body of peer‑reviewed science and major scientific organizations state unequivocally that recent warming is real and that human activity is the primary cause

•A 2019 review found consensus at 100%, and a 2021 study found over 99% of scientific papers agree on the human cause of climate change

•Most commonly cited figures are ~97% among publishing climate experts, and literature‑only analyses have found agreement exceeding 99%

The claim that global warming is entirely a natural phenomenon and not linked to rising carbon dioxide is not supported by the overwhelming body of scientific evidence.

Evidence that the planet is warming

NASA states:

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

Evidence includes:

•Unprecedented rate of warming: 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

•Human influence is established fact: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "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."

•IPCC strongest statement: The IPCC used its strongest terms yet to assert that humans are causing climate change, with the first line of its report summary reading: "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land."

This was later described as:

> "The fact that the IPCC has agreed — with the agreement of all 195 member countries — that it is unequivocal that human activity is causing climate change, is the strongest statement that the IPCC has ever made."

Specific observed changes

From global temperature rise to melting ice sheets, the evidence of a warming planet abounds:

•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

•The ocean has absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 100 meters of ocean showing warming since 1969, and Earth stores 90% of the extra energy in the ocean

•The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass - Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019

•Other signs include: glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world, spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased, global sea level rose about 8 inches in the last century with the rate in the last two decades nearly doubling, Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly, and ocean acidification has increased by about 30% since the Industrial Revolution

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century, and from the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response.

> 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

While natural variability plays some part, the preponderance of evidence indicates that human activities — particularly emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — are mostly responsible for the current warming.

Citations (1)

1nasa.govGovernment
Evidence - NASA Science
Backs: “There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause. Evidence includes: Unprecedented rate of warming: 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”