Principles of Sustainability
Chapter 6 - Energy Sustainability
Part 7 - Climate Change
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "climate change refers to a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer). Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use."
The Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: "a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods." The UNFCCC distinguishes "between climate change attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composition, and climate variability attributable to natural causes."
Interactive Exercises: Science of Climate Change
Interactive Exercises: Visualizing Global Climate Change
Keywords
- albedo
- anthropogenic
- atmosphere
- carbon cycle
- carbon dioxide (CO2)
- climate
- climate change
- climate model
- desertification
- equivalent CO2
- extreme weather event
- glacier
- Global Warming Potential (GWP)
- Greenhouse Effect
- greenhouse gas
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
- Kyoto Protocol
- mitigation
- scenario
- sea-level rise
- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)
Suggested Reading
- IPCC: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change. By Nathaniel Rich. Photographs and Videos by George Steinmetz. New York Times Magazine. Aug. 1, 2018
(Photo credit: Pete Williamson, 2010)
