Is climate change real? I'll pull the latest scientific evidence so you can see what the data shows.
Yes, climate change is real, according to overwhelming scientific evidence and scientific consensus.
What the science says
•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.
•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."
•The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia.
•It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun's energy in the Earth system.
•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.
The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report stated that it is "unequivocal" that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land, and that it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the global climate system since pre-industrial times.
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.
•Multiple assessments, including those by the IPCC, have established a strong consensus among climate scientists that global warming is real and largely human-induced.
•Most commonly cited figures are ~97% among publishing climate experts, and literature-only analyses have found agreement exceeding 99%.
Evidence
NASA and other agencies point to multiple independent lines of evidence, collected 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. Examples include:
•Global Temperature Rising: 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.
•Ice Sheets Shrinking: Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019, while Antarctica lost about 148 billion tons of ice per year.
•Sea Level Rising: 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.
•Other changes: Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska, and Africa, both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly, and the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age, and carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.