Human activities are changing climate globally (NASA), in this article we are compiling signs of Global Climate Change which includes increasing sea level and levels of atmospheric CO2, temperature, depletion of land ice and sea ice mass.

Global CO2 variation

Over the past decades there has been increase in the liberation of noxious gases into the atmosphere, CO2 being notorious of all of them is being accumulated in atmosphere in large amount which enters the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels (coal, fossil fuel, and oil), solid waste, trees and wood merchandise burning and respiration of living organisms. Moreover, countless natural determinants further exalt the emissions, include, the volcanic explosions and respiration as the cardinal contributors. Although increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration increases greenhouse effect and ultimately make earth warmer but sometimes it doesn’t increase linearly. It is reported, when the quantity of human induced atmospheric CO2 concentration goes up, temperatures don’t rise at a similar rate. NASA is providing vital evidences of recent global boosts in CO2 emission and Global Temperature. There has been an increase in atmospheric CO2 since industrial revolution but NASA, NOAA data shows linear boost in it since 2006.Data available at https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/ shows that global average CO2 concentration in January 2005 was 378.21 ppm which has risen to 407.62ppm in December 2017. It is a drastic change in green house gas concentration leading to increased global temperature.

Global Temperature Anomaly

With increasing CO2 global temperature is also facing a boost. NASA also issued historic and current trends in variation of anomaly average temperature of planet since 1880. In contrast to the mean temperatures observed in 1951-1980, the global climatic trends are shifting towards higher temperatures. Other than 1998, the 16 out of 17 hottest years are marked after 2001. The year 2016 is proclaimed as the year with the highest ever temperature on planet Earth (Source: NASA/GISS).  The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has deduced similar results through scientific investigations. Graph data available at https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/   show a positive anomaly of 0.99 in 2016 proving that global temperature has risen drastically compared to 1880. It proves that earth is warming up.

Arctic Ice and Sea Level Variation

Increasing atmospheric temperature melts more arctic ice thus responsible for decrease in arctic sea ice mass. NASA has reported a record minimum in arctic sea ice from 1979 to 2017 based upon satellite observations. According to NASA average sea ice cover measured in September shows that in 1979, 700 million square kilometer of sea surface was ice covered. Since then ice extent is deviating some time increasing (like in,1992, 1994,1996 ice extent was 7.3 Gt, 7.2 Gt, 7.6 Gt) then it started to decline steeply, and recent data acquired on September 2017 show a total of 4.8 million square kilometer ice which is estimated 13.2% decay per decade. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/. It is an alarming condition as decreasing ice is always coupled with increasing sea level as reported by NASA.  Sea level is increasing on an average rate of 3.2±0.4 mm per year since 1991. Sea level has bee increase to 82.8 mm in October 2017 https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/.

Land Ice Mass

NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) has calculated variation trends of land ice mass on earth surface. Data reported that sheet of ice on lands of Antarctica and Greenland is losing mass since 2002. Latest data acquired on January 2017 showed that there has been a decrease of 127± 39 Gt per year of ice mass on Antarctic. Similar results were also seen on Green land and there has been a decrease on 286±21 Gt per year loss of ice. (Source: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/land-ice/).

Increasing atmospheric green house gasses, rising temperature, decreasing land and sea ice mass and rising sea level are all proofs of  climate change and providing an alarming condition of glob. If we can not contorl it in near future humanity will have to face consequences of climate change.

Coauthored by : Muhammad Ashar Ayub, Muhammad Zia ur Rehman, Aisha A Waris and Hamaad Raza Ahmad