Climate Change In The Earth

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Climate change might be the most important issue that the world will have to deal with this century. Every year, the atmosphere's average temperature increases, causing large effects in the environment of the Earth. For example, the size of glaciers, the territory of animals, and the acidity of the oceans are all effected by the changing climate. The Normal Conditions The Earth goes through normal cycles of temperature increase and decrease, separate from human's impact, over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. Ice ages are part of the natural cycle, and Earth is currently in an ice age named the Quaternary Period, which has been occurring for the past 2.5 million years (Quaternary Period, 2017). From studying the geological evidence,…show more content…
When the tilt is at its greatest, the difference in radiation from winter to summer is at its highest point, causing very cold winters and hot summers. However, when the tilt is at its lowest, the poles get much less radiation than otherwise. Earth is currently at a 23.5% tilt, putting it near the middle of the cycle. The final part of the Milankovitch Cycles is Precession, which is Earth's wobble on its axis, which causes the axis to "point" in different directions (assuming you're looking at Earth at the same day of the year) across time. This cycle is what causes the change in the North Star, which changes from Vega to Polaris and back. This wobble oscillates in a 23,000 year cycle. When the North Star is Vega, the northern hemisphere's winter and summer solstice will perfectly coincide when furthest point in rotation around the sun, and the closest point, respectively. This causes even greater seasonal contrasts. Currently, the northern hemisphere's winter solstice is very close to when the Earth is closest to the sun. These three cycles have a massive impact on the average temperatures and are the root cause of Earth's natural warming and cooling…show more content…
Earth's climate is changing rapidly and temperatures are rising. The largest contributor to this change are "greenhouse gases" which are gases which trap solar radiation in the Earth's atmosphere. The main gases are water vapor, CO2, ozone, and methane. One of the ways scientists know the change in current average temperature is different than the Milankovitch Cycles is by looking at past CO2 data. By drilling into the ancient ice in the artic, geologists can find air bubbles trapped in the ice, and use this old atmosphere sample, estimate the composition of the air of the planet when the ice froze (NASA, 2016). Using this data, scientists know that the CO2 levels have not been as high as they are now in all of the past data. Since the industrial revolution, the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere has gone from 280 ppm to 406 ppm in
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