Heating up Fever is an early and usually reliable sign of illness – one of the first things any doctor looks for when a person is not feeling well. Our planet has a fever Specialist researchers at Britain's University of East Anglia have put together all the available data to produce a temperature chart for the last millennium. The warmest year on record was 1998, while the ten warmest years globally have all occurred in the last decade and half. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also said that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years "is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." The most significant of these gases is carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). And the single biggest source of it – 37% of all emissions worldwide – is the carbon-rich coal burnt in power plants. The global average temperature has increased by about 0.7°C in the last hundred years, according to the European Env...
A blanket to keep out the cold The Earth’s climate is driven by a continuous flow of energy from the sun. Heat energy from the sun passes through the Earth’s atmosphere and warms the Earth’s surface. As the temperature increases, the Earth sends heat energy (infrared radiation) back into the atmosphere. Some of this heat is absorbed by gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) , water vapour, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and helacarbons. The greenhouse effect These gases, which are all naturally occurring, act as a blanket, trapping in the heat and preventing it from being reflected too far from the Earth. They keep the Earth's average temperature at about 15°C: warm enough to sustain life for humans, plants and animals. Without these gases, the average temperature would be about minus 18°C - too cold for higher life. This natural warming effect is also sometimes called the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) CO 2 is the most significant of the ...
Of all the ocean currents, the Gulf Stream is one of the strongest. It brings warmth to Europe and North America. In fact, average annual temperature in north-west Europe is about 9°C above the average for this latitude because of the Gulf Stream. How does it work? Surface water in the north Atlantic is cooled by winds from the Arctic. It becomes more salty and more dense, which makes it sink to the ocean floor. The cold water then moves towards the equator where it slowly warms. To replace all this cold water, the Gulf Stream moves warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic. Could global warming affect the Gulf Stream? When the last Ice Age ended (10,000 years ago) and huge amounts of ice melted, the water in the North Atlantic became less salty because of all this new freshwater. As a result, the ocean water in the North Atlantic was less dense, and did not sink. This caused the Gulf Stream to shut down. Temperatures in north-west Europe fell by 5°C in just a few decade...
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