essay on global warming in gujarati

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ગ્લોબલ વોર્મિંગ અને જળવાયુ પરિવર્તન ભારત સહિત દુનિયા માટે ખતરો

Updated: Jun 30th, 2021

- સમુદ્રી જળ સ્તર વધતુ રહે તો લક્ષદ્વીપ પર મોટુ સંકટ

- સમુદ્રી કિનારે આવેલા વિસ્તારો જળસ્તર વધવાથી ડુબી શકે છે, લક્ષદ્વીપ જેવા નાના ટાપુઓની ચિંતાજનક સ્થિતિ

નવી દિલ્હી : ગ્લોબલ વોર્મિંગ અને જળવાયુ પરિવર્તન જેવા ખતરાએ પુરી દુનિયામાં એક મોટુ જોખમ ઉભુ કરી દીધુ છે. જેમાં એક સૌથી મોટો ખતરો સમુદ્રના જળસ્તરમાં વધારો છે. જેને પગલે સમુદ્રના કિનારે આવેલા વિસ્તારોમાં મોટુ સંકટ ઉભુ થઇ ગયું છે અને સ્થળાંતરની સ્થિતિ ઉભી થઇ શકે છે. ભારત પણ આ સમુદ્રના વધી રહેલા જળસ્તરના ખતરાથી બચી શકે તેમ નથી. કેમ કે દેશમાં અનેક રાજ્યો સમુદ્રી કિનારે આવેલા છે. તાજેતરના એક અધ્યયનમાં આ ચેતવણી અપાઇ છે.  

આ અધ્યયનમાં કહેવામાં આવ્યું છે કે ભારતના પશ્ચિમી કિનારાની રેખા પાસે સ્થિત લક્ષદ્વીપમાં સમુદ્રી સ્તરમાં વર્ષે ૦.૪ એમએમ પ્રતિ વર્ષથી લઇને ૦.૯ એમએમ પ્રતિ વર્ષના માપમાં વધારો થઇ શકે છે. સ્થિતિ એ છે કે સમુદ્રના જળસ્તરમાં વધારાથી આ પુરો ટાપુ અને ત્યાં રહેતા લોકો જોખમભરી સ્થિતિમાં મુકાયા છે. ખાસ લક્ષદ્વીપને ધ્યાનમાં રાખીને કરવામાં આવેલું આ પહેલુ સંશોધન છે. જેમાં ક્લાઇમેટ મોડલ અનુમાનના આધાર પર ભવિષ્યની ભીતિનું એક ચિત્ર સ્પષ્ટ કરવામાં આવ્યું છે. 

આઇઆઇટી ખડગપુરના વાસ્તુશિલ્પ તેમજ ક્ષેત્રીય નિયોજન અને મહાસાગર આભિયાંત્રિકી તેમજ નૌવહન વાસ્તુશિલ્પની સંયુક્ત ટીમે આ અધ્યયન હાથ ધર્યું હતું. આ અધ્યયન માટે ભારત સરકારના વિજ્ઞાાન તેમજ જળવાયુ પરિવર્તન કાર્યક્રમ (સીસીપી)એ પણ સહયોગ કર્યો હતો. ઉલ્લેખનીય છે કે ૩૬ ટાપુઓના સમુહ લક્ષદ્વીપ એક પર્યટન સ્થળ તરીકે પણ પ્રખ્યાત છે. એવામાં આ જળવાયુ પરિવર્તન અને ગ્લોબલ વોર્મિંગને કારણે તેના પર ખતરો વધી ગયો છે.

ગ્લોબલ વોર્મિંગના કારણે પરિસ્થતિ હજી પણ વણસી શકે તેવી વૈજ્ઞાનિકોની ચેતવણી

Flooded scenes in Molesworth St, Lismore, NSW, Wednesday , March 30, 2022. Heavy overnight rain has again forced the evacuation of residents in Lismore Source: AAP Image/Jason O'Brien

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World environment day 2024 : આજે વિશ્વ પર્યાવરણ દિવસ, કેમ મનાવામાં આવે છે આ દિવસ, cop28 summit : પીએમ નરેન્દ્ર મોદીએ 2028માં cop33ની સમિટ ભારતમાં આયોજિત કરવાનો પ્રસ્તાવ રાખ્યો, earth records hottest day : 4 જુલાઈએ પૃથ્વીનો અત્યાર સુધીનો સૌથી ગરમ દિવસ નોંધાયો, કારણો શું હોઈ શકે, plastic bag free day : દિયા મિર્ઝાએ પ્લાસ્ટિક પોલ્યુશનને હરાવવા પ્લાસ્ટિકના કેટલાક બેસ્ટ વિકલ્પો સૂચવ્યા, el nino : આબોહવા પરિવર્તનની પેટર્નને લીધે ખાદ્ય ફુગાવો વધ્યો, વૈશ્વિક અર્થતંત્રને ગંભીર અસર, el nino : અલ નીનો શું છે અને તે ચોમાસા પર કેવી અસર કરે છે જાણો વિગતવાર, carbon dioxide in atmosphere : કાર્બન ડાયોક્સાઇડનું સ્તર વધ્યું, યુનાઇટેડ સ્ટેટ્સના નેશનલ ઓસેનિક એન્ડ એટમોસ્ફેરિક એડમિનિસ્ટ્રેશનએ આપી અપડેટ, plastic recycling : પ્લાસ્ટિક રિસાયક્લિંગ નિષ્ફળ થઈ રહ્યું છે, વિશ્વએ આ રીતે આપવો જોઈએ પ્રતિસાદ, world environment day 2023: ઇતિહાસ, મહત્વ અને શા માટે આ દિવસની ઉજવવામાં આવે છે, gm food: ટકાઉ ખાદ્ય ઉત્પાદન માટે શ્રેષ્ઠ માર્ગ કયો હોઈ શકે.

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This ancient Gujarati city has stood strong against climate change for 2,500 years! Here's how they did it

Ashmita gupta   .

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Climate change in Gujarat: A bar towards sustainable development

Stuti Haldar , Indira Dutta | 2016

Climate change in the 21st century has emerged as a burning issue on the global platform. It has profound effects on the lives and stability of ecosystems all across the globe. Gujarat is no exception to the ambush of this perilous phenomenon. It has been noticed that the sea levels are rising, temperatures are shooting up and seasonal cycles have been disrupted frequently due to climate change in Gujarat. On the economic and industrial front Gujarat has emerged as a winning horse among all Indian states. But when we estimate its progress on the scale of sustainable development Gujarat appears to be quite behind. With the growing consciousness of the world towards the global menace of climate change we are now marching from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals. The dynamic state of Gujarat also needs to fasten its seat belts and accelerate swiftly towards the target of Sustainable Development Goals. There is an utmost need for participatory and inclusive efforts to evade the surging ecological, economic and social crisis accruing to global warming. Gujarat today needs institutional reforms and policy reforms that can mitigate the far reaching and harsh blisters of climate change especially on the poorer and vulnerable spectrum of the society. The herculean task of achieving the target Sustainable Development Goals can only be met by Gujarat if we join forces regionally, nationally and globally against the menace of climate change.

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Essay on Global Warming – Causes and Solutions

500+ words essay on global warming.

Global Warming is a term almost everyone is familiar with. But, its meaning is still not clear to most of us. So, Global warming refers to the gradual rise in the overall temperature of the atmosphere of the Earth. There are various activities taking place which have been increasing the temperature gradually. Global warming is melting our ice glaciers rapidly. This is extremely harmful to the earth as well as humans. It is quite challenging to control global warming; however, it is not unmanageable. The first step in solving any problem is identifying the cause of the problem. Therefore, we need to first understand the causes of global warming that will help us proceed further in solving it. In this essay on Global Warming, we will see the causes and solutions of Global Warming.

Causes of Global Warming

Global warming has become a grave problem which needs undivided attention. It is not happening because of a single cause but several causes. These causes are both natural as well as manmade. The natural causes include the release of greenhouses gases which are not able to escape from earth, causing the temperature to increase.

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Further, volcanic eruptions are also responsible for global warming. That is to say, these eruptions release tons of carbon dioxide which contributes to global warming. Similarly, methane is also one big issue responsible for global warming.

So, when one of the biggest sources of absorption of carbon dioxide will only disappear, there will be nothing left to regulate the gas. Thus, it will result in global warming. Steps must be taken immediately to stop global warming and make the earth better again.

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Global Warming Solutions

As stated earlier, it might be challenging but it is not entirely impossible. Global warming can be stopped when combined efforts are put in. For that, individuals and governments, both have to take steps towards achieving it. We must begin with the reduction of greenhouse gas.

Furthermore, they need to monitor the consumption of gasoline. Switch to a hybrid car and reduce the release of carbon dioxide. Moreover, citizens can choose public transport or carpool together. Subsequently, recycling must also be encouraged.

Read Global Warming Speech here

For instance, when you go shopping, carry your own cloth bag. Another step you can take is to limit the use of electricity which will prevent the release of carbon dioxide. On the government’s part, they must regulate industrial waste and ban them from emitting harmful gases in the air. Deforestation must be stopped immediately and planting of trees must be encouraged.

In short, all of us must realize the fact that our earth is not well. It needs to treatment and we can help it heal. The present generation must take up the responsibility of stopping global warming in order to prevent the suffering of future generations. Therefore, every little step, no matter how small carries a lot of weight and is quite significant in stopping global warming.

हिंदी में ग्लोबल वार्मिंग पर निबंध यहाँ पढ़ें

FAQs on Global Warming

Q.1 List the causes of Global Warming.

A.1 There are various causes of global warming both natural and manmade. The natural one includes a greenhouse gas, volcanic eruption, methane gas and more. Next up, manmade causes are deforestation, mining, cattle rearing, fossil fuel burning and more.

Q.2 How can one stop Global Warming?

A.2 Global warming can be stopped by a joint effort by the individuals and the government. Deforestation must be banned and trees should be planted more. The use of automobiles must be limited and recycling must be encouraged.

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Gujarat is battered by heat waves, floods, drought. How are its cities coping?

Rising climate variability is adding to the state’s environmental vulnerabilities..

What does the climate map of Gujarat currently look like?

Southern parts of the state get fewer days of rainfall now. In Surat, for instance, locals say that rainfall patterns over the city began changing about 15 years ago, with the city getting fewer days of rain each year. However, the rainfall is more intense, so Surat floods more often.

In Ahmedabad, 270 km to the north, the mercury topped 50 degrees Celsius last year – the previous high was 47.8 degrees Celsius over 100 years ago, in 1916 . Another 150 km to the north lies Banaskantha , a normally arid region. Here, heavy rains caused flooding this year. To the south-west, in arid Saurashtra, farmers and scientists talk about delayed monsoons, increasingly torrential downpours and increased flooding .

There is little that is surprising here. Across India, climate variability is disrupting the structures of everyday life. In 2015, changing mid-latitude westerlies triggered a whitefly infestation that ruined Punjab’s cotton crop. In Tamil Nadu, rising sea temperatures have affected the fish catch. Inland, towards the town of Sivagangai, a weakening South-West monsoon has contributed to a drop in farm earnings and rising indebtedness. In Bihar, scientists in the agriculture university outside Bhagalpur say that crop yields are falling as heat waves increase in frequency.

The first five states Scroll.in’s Ear To The Ground project reported from – Mizoram, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Bihar – were not doing much to adapt to, or mitigate the effects of, such climatic changes.

What about Gujarat?

Environmental vulnerabilities

Till the early 2000s, Gujarat had a very different sense of its environmental vulnerabilities.

In 1998, a super cyclone had ripped through the port city of Kandla. Three years later, a quake reduced Bhuj to rubble. In response, Gujarat conducted a hazard and vulnerability analysis.

GK Bhat, the founder of Taru, an environmental consultancy based in Ahmedabad, said that the major environmental risks the study flagged were drought, flood, cyclone and earthquakes. Of these, the greatest exposure was to drought, he said.

Since then, Gujarat has tried hard to drought-proof itself. Apart from building check dams to boost groundwater levels, it kicked off two large water management programmes – both feeding off the Sardar Sarovar Dam. The first was Sujlam Suflam – a canal that moves surplus Narmada waters (what is left during the monsoons after statutory allocations to all states) to North Gujarat. This canal was left unlined hoping it would recharge groundwater levels along its route. The second was Sauni Yojana – a network of pipelines that takes Narmada water to Saurashtra.

But now, rising climate variability is adding to the state’s environmental vulnerabilities.

Gujarat claims to have taken climate variability more seriously than other states. As Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi wrote a book on climate change. Gujarat was the first state in India to set up a department for climate change. Its cities are developing plans that seek to adapt or mitigate the worst fallout of climatic stress. While Ahmedabad has a roadmap to handle heat waves, Surat has a similar blueprint to tackle floods.

How far do the state’s efforts help Gujarat adapt to – and mitigate – the fallouts of a changing climate? Scroll.in’s Ear To The Ground project decided to take a closer look. Given that Gujarat is one of India’s most urbanised states, we studied urban planning to see how well adaptation and mitigation are being mainstreamed into the planning and implementation processes in the state.

But first, how exactly does climate variability affect cities?

Cities and climate trends

Climate variability affects cities in two ways essentially. The first is in the form of extreme weather like heavy rain or floods. And the second, in slower, subtler ways, like gradual increases in temperature or an increase in the sea level.

Think of the first as a shock. The second, as a stress. Gujarat is seeing both. Its cities saw heavy downpours during the 2017 monsoon. At the same time, temperature patterns are changing, said Saswat Bandopadhyay, faculty member in the department of planning at Ahmedabad’s CEPT University. In Ahmedabad, for instance, the difference between daytime and night-time temperature has reduced. “At one time, even if the mercury went up to 45 degrees Celsius, nights were pleasant and temperatures came down to [between] 25 degrees Celsius and 26 degrees Celsius,” he said. But now, he added, “They come down just half as much – to [between] 32 degrees Celsius and 34 degrees Celsius.”

Shocks and stresses come with different challenges for a city.

The first comes with cascading fallouts, said Bhat. He cited the example of especially heavy rainfall. Its first fallout is not flooding but traffic jams, he said. During these events, cities start shutting down. “Cities depend on networks – a flow of milk, a flow of food, cash for ATMs,” said Bhat. “As one urban system fails, it incapacitates the others. And cities see a progressive network failure.”

Bhat drew an analogy with a living system. “These [urban failures] are not independent failures,” he said. “But multi-organ failure. Every failing organ incapacitates the rest – reaching social unrest and epidemics in its higher reaches.”

Rising temperatures, on the other hand, trigger a spiral. For instance, when night brings no relief from high temperatures, as in Ahmedabad, many people cannot sleep without the use of air-conditioners . But these expel hot air, which heats the city up further.

How do urban planners respond to such challenges? One part of the response lies in zoning. Bandopadhyay said each city needs natural spaces that absorb environmental shocks. If a city is vulnerable to floods, it needs to create spaces where the water can collect and get absorbed. If high temperatures are a problem, ensuring sufficient green cover is one way to cool the city down.

He referred to the climate mitigation efforts of Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. “They created a very detailed assessment of surface temperatures and then looked at the level of surface greening needed to manage that,” he said.

He added that its planners also asked other questions, like the building material that should be used in the region. “They modelled wind patterns because city layouts [like tall buildings] would influence those.”

So far, urban India has not done much to mitigate the effects of climate variability . Instead of using building materials suitable for our climate, a lot of modern construction in India relies on inappropriate construction materials. Several malls and office buildings, for instance, are clad in glass panels, which absorb heat and drive up cooling costs.

Similarly, most Indian cities have a low tree cover and more hard surfaces. “Most of our plots are concretised to maximise built-up space,” said Bandopadhyay. “The land outside is also paved over and tarred. There is very little open area for water absorption.”

The fallout? As Bengaluru found recently, even after heavy rains, there is little groundwater recharge. At the same time, lakes, which recharge groundwater, are being killed through real estate development. Little thought is given to water supply. When water scarcities loom, urban areas source water from increasingly lenghty distances. Government efforts often ignore the poor, forcing them into private water markets.

In peri-urban areas, something else is awry. Take any city, said Bhat, and you will find that the panchayat president has given permission for even five-to-seven-storey buildings to be constructed in villages that fall outside municipal boundaries. “When the municipal corporation expands its limits, it finds these strange places where buildings are standing – but there are no roads, water supply or sewage,” he said. “The whole place works only on groundwater.”

As climate change becomes a reality, all this needs to change.

Rajkot’s response

To understand how Gujarat is factoring changing climate trends into urban planning, this correspondent visited Rajkot.

Rajkot, the fourth-biggest city in Gujarat after Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat, is located close to the centre of Saurashtra. The city is urbanising rapidly as people, drawn by both its industrial and service economy as well as Gujarat’s weakening rural economy, flock here. It is also a water-scarce city. Its second revised draft development plan (2031) says: “[Rajkot Municipal Corporation] is able to supply only 20 minutes of water daily as against the benchmark of 24 hours.”

A closer look at the city’s work on preparing for climate change shows a mixed picture.

On some fronts, Rajkot is doing well. To make the city more energy-efficient, Rajkot’s Municipal Corporation has made solar heaters mandatory. Rainwater harvesting is mandatory too. These efforts, however, are undercut by other decisions. As it expands, Rajkot is leaving very little room for environmental sinks like green zones. As a city grows, it should leave about 30% of its surface area for green zones and environmental sinks, said Mahesh Rajasekar, a former environmental consultant with Taru. “What holds true for a nation also holds true at a smaller, ward level.”

But Rajkot’s old city has a green cover of about 2%, and its periphery does not fare any better.

A town planner who has worked in both the Rajkot Municipal Corporation and the Rajkot Urban Development Authority, who did not want to be identified, explained why this was the case. He said that as a planner, he can take 30% to 40% of a land-owner’s land for a public purpose. “Half of that will go into roads,” he said. “Some more will go into civic infrastructure. The rest goes into parks and gardens. You will not have as much green zone as desired.”

Or take water. Rajkot currently needs about 270 million litres of water every day. Of this, it gets about 125 million litres from local reservoirs and it draws about 155 million litres to 165 million litres from the Narmada. “Our total supply is 300 MLD [million litres a day],” said senior municipal corporation official. “What we use is 270 MLD. We have a small buffer.”

That will change with the city’s expansion. By 2031, the town’s water demand will be 400 million litres a day, he said. Where will this water come from?

“Ask about water supply and officials say they will get it from the Narmada,” said Bandopadhyay. But that is easier said than done. The water from the Sauni network of pipelines comes with its own uncertainties.

Said the municipal official: “I have full reliability from my local reservoirs. But Sauni will not be 100% reliable. Like us, all corporations are planning till 2045. and making their own [water] drawal plans.”

That is not all. Water from the Sauni project is expensive. “The cost of my water from Aji and Nyari [rivers] is Rs 2 to Rs 3 per kilolitre,” said the municipal corporation official. “The cost of the water from the Sauni [project] is Rs 12 to Rs 15 [per kilolitre].”

The water from the Sauni is so expensive due to the cost of energy used to transport it. It has to be pumped uphill from near sea level – where the Narmada reservoir is – to Saurashtra whose topography is like an inverted bowl.

There is the option of seawater. But desalination is even costlier. And so, the corporation is focusing on water recycling and reuse. But there is a problem even there – the lack of funds. To expand water coverage, the municipal corporation needs Rs 1,761 crores. But it does not have the money for this.

“Octroi was abolished in 2005,” said the municipal corporation official explaining how the corporation’s financial condition has weakened. “In 2007, property tax was done away with.” He said that some of the corporation’s losses were recouped due to the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission but the advantage of octroi and property tax was their untied nature. “Every city could choose how to use that money,” he said. “In contrast, these grants are tied funds.”

To make up the shortfall in revenue, the corporation is now applying for grants like the Centre’s Smart City programme and Amrut (the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission in a new avatar). But these grants are limited and come with caveats.

Said the municipal officer: “What we got from Amrut is Rs 293 crores. From Smart City, Rs 250 crores. Also, this money is only for capital expenses. How do I pay for operations and maintenance?”

These are puzzling contradictions. If Rajkot was not serious about fighting climate variability, it would not have taken the steps it did. At the same time, if it is alive to the risk of a changing climate, why is it not creating sustainable cities?

The answer may lie in analysing how Gujarat’s Urban Development Authorities function.

This is the first part of a two-part series.

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Climate change in India: Gujarat faces problem of plenty

Fifty five-year Khan Mohammed Abdarman is a proud Maldhari, one of India’s oldest pastoral communities that has lived a nomadic life in Gujarat’s arid Banni grassland for over 500 years. But in 2007, he decided to do the unthinkable—to settle down and do farming. “The decision was difficult, but it had to be taken as I was unable to feed my cattle, who we consider our family members,” says Abdarman, who today grows guar and jowar in 20 hectares. He says it was the only way he could adapt to the sudden increase in rainfall in the arid grassland, which is home to more than 40,000 Maldharis.

He explains that the increase in rainfall meant the grassland got taken over by Prosopis juliflora, an invasive species that was introduced in the area in the 1950s. The species, locally called gando baval, literally, the crazy growing tree, today covers almost 55 per cent of the grassland, spanning over 2,500 sq km. This has led to an acute shortage of fodder. Interestingly, the rains made the arid region conducive to farming.

“Traditionally, the region received rainfall every four years. Starting 2000, it has been raining almost every year,” says Pankaj Joshi, executive director of local non-profit Sehjeevan. Ovee Thorat, researcher with Bengaluru-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environ- ment (ATREE), says the last long dry spell in the region was seen between 1970 and 1980. Data with the Bhuj Metrological Observatory shows that the area today receives 1.4 times more rainfall than the average in 1991-2000.

While changing rain pattern sets the stage for agriculture, other factors pushed the Maldharis to bring the land under plough. “Around 2008, the forest department started to cut plots in the reserve to stop ingress of saline water from the neighbouring salt mash of Rann of Kachchh. The community viewed the move as a way to lay claim on the grassland over which they have traditional ownership,” says Thorat. The fear was further fuelled because the state government is yet to give community forest rights (CFR) to the Maldharis under the Forest Rights Act 2006, he says. The community, in 2012, filed for 47 CFR claims. Today, farming is being carried out in over 17,000 ha, which is roughly 7 per cent of the reserve.

The sudden surge in farming has divided the community. In May this year, Banni Breeders Association, a local organisation of Maldharis working to conserve the grassland, filed a petition in the National Green Tribunal against rampant farming. On July 11, the tribunal told the forest and revenue department to stop all agricultural activity in the grassland.

“We have been rearing cattle for generations. That is what we do. In the past five or six years, farming has become rampant. This is not good for community as we are not like the settled agriculturists,” says Salam Hasham Halepotra of Hodko village. He owns around 100 buffaloes. He says from being an area where resources was communally owned, people are staking individual claim on the grassland by converting those into agricultural lands. Last year, Misriyara panchayat in eastern Banni region asked the district collector to intervene and through a public meeting made the encroachers stop farming. “To save the farmlands, they started digging trenches around the field where our buffaloes would often fall and die. Our estimate is that the community was losing over 200 animals every year due to the trenches. So we had to stop it,” says Bhuddha Hazi Khamisha, sarpanch of the panchayat.

Farming is destroying not only the community, but also the ecology of the grassland. “Banni’s landscape, like any other ecologically sensitive area, has reached here through a long process of successive natural changes. Agriculture will tip the balance and reduce the nature’s ability to restore the land. Once ploughed, the soil is exposed to erosion due to the sea breeze. Over the time, only the lower alkaline soil layers will be left. Then nothing will grow here,” warns Joshi.

“The wind velocity during summer is very high in Banni. If the land is ploughed, the high rate of top soil erosion will lead to desertification,” says Vijay Kumar, director, Gujarat Institute of Desert Ecology.

(This article was first published in Down To Earth's October 16-31 print edition under the headline 'On a losing streak')

(This is the fifth article in a six-part series on climate change in India. Read the first  here , second  here , third  here  and fourth here )

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How does global warming work?

Where does global warming occur in the atmosphere, why is global warming a social problem, where does global warming affect polar bears.

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Human activity affects global surface temperatures by changing Earth ’s radiative balance—the “give and take” between what comes in during the day and what Earth emits at night. Increases in greenhouse gases —i.e., trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that absorb heat energy emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiate it back—generated by industry and transportation cause the atmosphere to retain more heat, which increases temperatures and alters precipitation patterns.

Global warming, the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries, happens mostly in the troposphere , the lowest level of the atmosphere, which extends from Earth’s surface up to a height of 6–11 miles. This layer contains most of Earth’s clouds and is where living things and their habitats and weather primarily occur.

Continued global warming is expected to impact everything from energy use to water availability to crop productivity throughout the world. Poor countries and communities with limited abilities to adapt to these changes are expected to suffer disproportionately. Global warming is already being associated with increases in the incidence of severe and extreme weather, heavy flooding , and wildfires —phenomena that threaten homes, dams, transportation networks, and other facets of human infrastructure. Learn more about how the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, released in 2021, describes the social impacts of global warming.

Polar bears live in the Arctic , where they use the region’s ice floes as they hunt seals and other marine mammals . Temperature increases related to global warming have been the most pronounced at the poles, where they often make the difference between frozen and melted ice. Polar bears rely on small gaps in the ice to hunt their prey. As these gaps widen because of continued melting, prey capture has become more challenging for these animals.

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global warming , the phenomenon of increasing average air temperatures near the surface of Earth over the past one to two centuries. Climate scientists have since the mid-20th century gathered detailed observations of various weather phenomena (such as temperatures, precipitation , and storms) and of related influences on climate (such as ocean currents and the atmosphere’s chemical composition). These data indicate that Earth’s climate has changed over almost every conceivable timescale since the beginning of geologic time and that human activities since at least the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have a growing influence over the pace and extent of present-day climate change .

Giving voice to a growing conviction of most of the scientific community , the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), published in 2021, noted that the best estimate of the increase in global average surface temperature between 1850 and 2019 was 1.07 °C (1.9 °F). An IPCC special report produced in 2018 noted that human beings and their activities have been responsible for a worldwide average temperature increase between 0.8 and 1.2 °C (1.4 and 2.2 °F) since preindustrial times, and most of the warming over the second half of the 20th century could be attributed to human activities.

AR6 produced a series of global climate predictions based on modeling five greenhouse gas emission scenarios that accounted for future emissions, mitigation (severity reduction) measures, and uncertainties in the model projections. Some of the main uncertainties include the precise role of feedback processes and the impacts of industrial pollutants known as aerosols , which may offset some warming. The lowest-emissions scenario, which assumed steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2015, predicted that the global mean surface temperature would increase between 1.0 and 1.8 °C (1.8 and 3.2 °F) by 2100 relative to the 1850–1900 average. This range stood in stark contrast to the highest-emissions scenario, which predicted that the mean surface temperature would rise between 3.3 and 5.7 °C (5.9 and 10.2 °F) by 2100 based on the assumption that greenhouse gas emissions would continue to increase throughout the 21st century. The intermediate-emissions scenario, which assumed that emissions would stabilize by 2050 before declining gradually, projected an increase of between 2.1 and 3.5 °C (3.8 and 6.3 °F) by 2100.

Many climate scientists agree that significant societal, economic, and ecological damage would result if the global average temperature rose by more than 2 °C (3.6 °F) in such a short time. Such damage would include increased extinction of many plant and animal species, shifts in patterns of agriculture , and rising sea levels. By 2015 all but a few national governments had begun the process of instituting carbon reduction plans as part of the Paris Agreement , a treaty designed to help countries keep global warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels in order to avoid the worst of the predicted effects. Whereas authors of the 2018 special report noted that should carbon emissions continue at their present rate, the increase in average near-surface air temperature would reach 1.5 °C sometime between 2030 and 2052, authors of the AR6 report suggested that this threshold would be reached by 2041 at the latest.

The AR6 report also noted that the global average sea level had risen by some 20 cm (7.9 inches) between 1901 and 2018 and that sea level rose faster in the second half of the 20th century than in the first half. It also predicted, again depending on a wide range of scenarios, that the global average sea level would rise by different amounts by 2100 relative to the 1995–2014 average. Under the report’s lowest-emission scenario, sea level would rise by 28–55 cm (11–21.7 inches), whereas, under the intermediate emissions scenario, sea level would rise by 44–76 cm (17.3–29.9 inches). The highest-emissions scenario suggested that sea level would rise by 63–101 cm (24.8–39.8 inches) by 2100.

The scenarios referred to above depend mainly on future concentrations of certain trace gases, called greenhouse gases , that have been injected into the lower atmosphere in increasing amounts through the burning of fossil fuels for industry, transportation , and residential uses. Modern global warming is the result of an increase in magnitude of the so-called greenhouse effect , a warming of Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere caused by the presence of water vapour , carbon dioxide , methane , nitrous oxides , and other greenhouse gases. In 2014 the IPCC first reported that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere surpassed those found in ice cores dating back 800,000 years.

Of all these gases, carbon dioxide is the most important, both for its role in the greenhouse effect and for its role in the human economy. It has been estimated that, at the beginning of the industrial age in the mid-18th century, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were roughly 280 parts per million (ppm). By the end of 2022 they had risen to 419 ppm, and, if fossil fuels continue to be burned at current rates, they are projected to reach 550 ppm by the mid-21st century—essentially, a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in 300 years.

A vigorous debate is in progress over the extent and seriousness of rising surface temperatures, the effects of past and future warming on human life, and the need for action to reduce future warming and deal with its consequences. This article provides an overview of the scientific background related to the subject of global warming. It considers the causes of rising near-surface air temperatures, the influencing factors, the process of climate research and forecasting, and the possible ecological and social impacts of rising temperatures. For an overview of the public policy developments related to global warming occurring since the mid-20th century, see global warming policy . For a detailed description of Earth’s climate, its processes, and the responses of living things to its changing nature, see climate . For additional background on how Earth’s climate has changed throughout geologic time , see climatic variation and change . For a full description of Earth’s gaseous envelope, within which climate change and global warming occur, see atmosphere .

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Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun’s heat. This leads to global warming and climate change. The world is now warming faster than at any point in recorded history. Warmer temperatures over time are changing weather patterns and disrupting the usual balance of nature. This poses many risks to human beings and all other forms of life on Earth. 

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Soaring temperatures in New York, July 2010. Photo by Eric Thayer/Reuters

The melting brain

It’s not just the planet and not just our health – the impact of a warming climate extends deep into our cortical fissures.

by Clayton Page Aldern   + BIO

In February 1884, the English art critic and polymath John Ruskin took the lectern at the London Institution for a pair of lectures on the weather. ‘The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century’ was his invective against a particular ‘wind of darkness’ and ‘plague-cloud’ that, in his estimate, had begun to envelope Victorian cities only in recent years. He had been taking careful meteorological measurements, he told a sceptical audience. He railed against the ‘bitterness and malice’ of the new weather in question; and, perhaps more importantly, about how it mirrored a certain societal ‘moral gloom’. You could read in us what you could read in the weather, he suggested.

July Thundercloud in the Val d’Aosta (1858) by John Ruskin. Courtesy Wikipedia

It was easy that February, and perhaps easy today, to disregard any alleged winds of darkness as the ravings of a madman. Clouds are clouds: even if Ruskin’s existed – which was a question of some contemporaneous debate – it would be untoward to imagine they bore any relationship with the human psyche. As Brian Dillon observed of the cloud lectures in The Paris Review in 2019, it can be hard to tell where Ruskin’s ‘bad weather ends and his own ragged, doleful mood begins.’ In 1886, Ruskin suffered a mental breakdown while giving a talk in Oxford. By the end of his life at the turn of the century, he was widely considered insane. His ramblings on meteorology and the human spirit aren’t exactly treated with the same gravitas as his books on J M W Turner.

And yet, for Ruskin, the clouds weren’t just clouds: they were juiced up by a ‘dense manufacturing mist’, as he’d noted in a diary entry. The plague-clouds embodied the miasma of the Industrial Revolution; the moral gloom was specifically that which arose from the rapid societal and environmental changes that were afoot. Ruskin’s era had seen relentless transformation of pastoral landscapes into industrial hubs. Everything smelled like sulphur and suffering. Soot-filled air, chemical and human waste, the clamour of machinery – these were more than just physical nuisances. They were assaults on the senses, shaping moods and behaviour in ways that were not yet fully understood.

Mining Area (1852-1905) by Constantin Meunier. Courtesy Wikipedia

Ruskin believed that the relentless pace of industrialisation, with its cacophony of tools and sprawling factories and environmental destruction, undermined psychological wellbeing: that the mind, much like the body, required a healthy social and physical environment to thrive. This was actually a somewhat new idea. (Isaac Ray, a founder of the American Psychiatric Association, wouldn’t define the idea of ‘mental hygiene’, the precursor to mental health, until 1893.) Instability in the environment, for Ruskin, begot instability in the mind. One reflected the other.

M ore than a century later, as we grapple with a new suite of breakneck environmental changes, the plague-clouds are again darkly literal. Global average surface temperatures have risen by about 1.1°C (2°F) since the pre-industrial era, with most of this warming occurring in the past 40 years. Ice is melting; seas are steadily rising; storms are – well, you know this story. And yet, most frequently, it is still a story of the world out there: the world outside of us. The narrative of climate change is one of meteorological extremes, economic upheaval and biodiversity losses. But perhaps it is worth taking a maybe-mad Ruskin seriously. What of our internal clouds? As the climate crisis warps weather and acidifies oceans and shatters temperature records with frightening regularity, one is tempted to ask if our minds are changing in kind.

Here are some of the most concerning answers in the affirmative. Immigration judges are less likely to rule in favour of asylum seekers on hotter days. On such days, students behave as if they’ve lost a quarter-year of education, relative to temperate days. Warmer school years correspond to lower rates of learning. Temperature predicts the incidence of online hate speech. Domestic violence spikes with warmer weather. Suicide , too.

In baseball, pitchers are more likely to hit batters with their pitches on hot days

But you already know what this feels like. Perhaps you’re more ornery in the heat. Maybe you feel a little slow in the head. It’s harder to focus and easier to act impulsively. Tomes of cognitive neuroscience and behavioural economics research back you up, and it’s not all as dire as domestic violence. Drivers honk their horns more frequently (and lean on them longer) at higher temperatures. Heat predicts more aggressive penalties in sport. In baseball, pitchers are more likely to hit batters with their pitches on hot days – and the outdoor temperature is an even stronger predictor of their tendency to retaliate in this manner if they’ve witnessed an opposing pitcher do the same thing.

In other words: it would appear the plague-clouds are within us, too. They illustrate the interconnectedness of our inner and outer worlds. They betray a certain flimsiness of human agency, painting our decision-making in strokes of environmental influence far bolder than our intuition suggests. And they throw the climate crisis into fresh, stark relief: because, yes, as the climate changes, so do we.

T he London Institution closed in 1912. These days, when you want to inveigh against adverse environmental-mind interactions, you publish a paper in The Lancet . And so that is what 24 mostly British, mostly clinical neurologists did in May 2024, arguing that the ‘incidence, prevalence, and severity of many nervous system conditions’ can be affected by global warming. For these researchers, led by Sanjay Sisodiya, professor of neurology at University College London in the UK, the climate story is indeed one of internal clouds.

In their survey of 332 scientific studies, Sisodiya and his colleagues show that climatic influence extends far beyond behaviour and deep into cortical fissures. Aspects of migraine, stroke, seizure and multiple sclerosis all appear to be temperature dependent. In Taiwan, report the authors, the risk of schizophrenia hospitalisation increases with widening daytime temperature ranges. In California , too, ‘hospital visits for any mental health disorder, self-harm, intentional injury of another person, or homicide’ rise with broader daily temperature swings. In Switzerland , hospitalisations for psychiatric disorders increase with temperature, with the risk particularly pronounced for those with developmental disorders and schizophrenia.

Outside the hospital, climate change is extending the habitable range of disease vectors like ticks, mosquitoes and bats, causing scientists to forecast an increased incidence of vector-borne and zoonotic brain maladies like yellow fever, Zika and cerebral malaria. Outside the healthcare system writ large, a changing environment bears on sensory systems and perception, degrading both sensory information and the biological tools we use to process it. Outside the realm of the even remotely reasonable, warming freshwater brings with it an increased frequency of cyanobacterial blooms, the likes of which release neurotoxins that increase the risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease).

Experiencing natural disasters in utero greatly increases children’s risk of anxiety, depression and ADHD

Indeed, recent studies suggest that climate change may be exacerbating the already substantial burden of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In countries with warmer-than-average climates, more intense warming has been linked to a greater increase in Parkinson’s cases and, as Sisodiya et al note, the highest forecasted rates of increase in dementia prevalence are ‘expected to be in countries experiencing the largest effects of climate change’. Similarly, short-term exposure to high temperatures appears to drive up emergency department visits for Alzheimer’s patients. The air we breathe likely plays a complementary role: in Mexico City, for example, where residents are exposed to high levels of fine particulate matter and ozone from a young age, autopsies have revealed progressive Alzheimer’s pathology in 99 per cent of those under the age of 30.

The risks aren’t limited to those alive today. In 2022, for example, an epidemiological study revealed that heat exposure during early pregnancy is associated with a significantly increased risk of children developing schizophrenia, anorexia and other neuropsychiatric conditions. High temperatures during gestation have long been known to delay neurodevelopment in rats. Other scientists have shown that experiencing natural disasters in utero greatly increases children’s risk of anxiety, depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorders later in life. Such effects cast the intergenerational responsibilities of the Anthropocene in harsh new light – not least because, as Sisodiya and colleagues write, there is a tremendous ‘global disparity between regions most affected by climate change (both now and in the future) and regions in which the majority of studies are undertaken.’ We don’t know what we don’t know.

What we do know is that the brain is emerging, in study after study, as one of climate change’s most vulnerable landscapes.

It is a useful reorientation. Return to the horn-honking and the baseball pitchers for a moment. A focus on the brain sheds some potential mechanistic light on the case studies and allows us to avoid phrases like ‘wind of darkness’. Higher temperatures, for example, appear to shift functional brain networks – the coordinated behaviour of various regions – toward randomised activity. In extreme heat, scientists have taken note of an overworked dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the evolutionarily new brain region that the neuroendocrinologist Robert M Sapolsky at Stanford University in the US calls ‘the definitive rational decider in the frontal cortex’. The dlPFC limits the degree to which people make impulsive decisions; disrupted dlPFC activity tends to imply a relatively heightened influence of limbic structures (like the emotionally attuned amygdala) on behaviour. More heat, less rational decision-making.

When extreme heat reaches into your mind and tips your scales toward violence, it is constraining your choices

The physicality of environmental influence on the brain is more widespread than the dlPFC – and spans multiple spatial scales. Heat stress in zebrafish, for example, down-regulates the expression of proteins relevant to synapse construction and neurotransmitter release. In mice, heat also triggers inflammation in the hippocampus, a brain region necessary for memory formation and storage. While neuroinflammation often plays an initially protective role, chronic activation of immune cells – like microglia and astrocytes – can turn poisonous, since pro-inflammatory molecules can damage brain cells in the long run. In people, hyperthermia is associated with decreased blood flow to this region. Psychologists’ observations of waning cognition and waxing aggression at higher temperatures makes a world of sense in the context of such findings.

The nascent field of environmental neuroscience seeks to ‘understand the qualitative and quantitative relationships between the external environment, neurobiology, psychology and behaviour’. Searching for a more specific neologism – since that particular phrase also encompasses environmental exposures like noise, urban development, lighting and crime – we might refer to our budding, integrative field as climatological neuroepidemiology. Or, I don’t know, maybe we need something snappier for TikTok. Neuroclimatology? Ecological neurodynamics?

I tend to prefer: the weight of nature.

The weight forces our hands, as in the case of the behavioural effects highlighted above. When extreme heat reaches into your mind and tips your scales toward violence, it is constraining your choices. By definition, impulsive decisions are rooted in comparatively less reflection than considered decisions: to the extent that a changing climate influences our reactions and decision-making, we should understand it as compromising our perceived free will. The weight of nature is heavy. It displaces us.

It is also a heavy psychological burden to carry. You are likely familiar with the notion of climate anxiety . The phrase, which tends to refer to a near-pathological state of worry and fear of impending environmental destruction, has never sat particularly well with me. Anxiety, as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual , is usually couched in terms of ‘excessive’ worry. I’m not convinced there’s anything excessive about seeing the climatic writing on the wall and feeling a sense of doom. Perhaps we ought to consider the climate-anxious as having more developed brains than the rest of the litter – that the Cassandras are the only sane ones left.

I ’m not exactly joking. Neuroscience has begun to study the brains in question, and not for nothing. The midcingulate cortex, a central hub in the brain’s threat-detection circuitry, may hold some clues to the condition’s biological basis: in one 2024 study , for example, researchers at Northern Michigan University in the US found that people who reported higher levels of anxiety about climate change showed distinct patterns of brain structure and function in this region, relative to those with lower levels of climate anxiety – and irrespective of base levels of anxiety writ large. In particular, the climate-anxious brain appears to play host to a smaller midcingulate (in terms of grey matter), but one that’s functionally more connected to other key hubs in the brain’s salience network, a system understood to constantly scan the environment for emotionally relevant information. In the salience network, the midcingulate cortex works hand in hand with limbic structures like the amygdala and insula to prepare the body to respond appropriately to this type of information. In people with climate anxiety, this network may be especially attuned to signals of climate-related threats.

Rather than indicating a deficiency, then, a diminutive midcingulate might reflect a more efficient, finely honed threat-detection system. The brain is well known to prune redundant connections over time, preserving only the most useful neural pathways. Selective sculpting, suggest the Michigan researchers, may allow the climate-anxious brain to process worrisome information more effectively, facilitating rapid communication between the midcingulate and other regions involved in threat anticipation and response. In other words, they write, the climate-anxious midcingulate might be characterised by ‘more efficient wiring’.

This neural sensitivity to potential dangers could be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it may attune some people to the very real perils of the future. The midcingulate is critical for anticipating future threats, and meta-analyses have found the region to be consistently activated when people contemplate unpredictable negative outcomes. Given the looming spectre of climate catastrophe, a hair-trigger threat-detection system could be an adaptive asset.

Climate anxiety is not just a sociocultural phenomenon. It has a theoretically identifiable neural correlate

On the other hand, argue the researchers:

[T]he complexity, uncertainty, as well as temporal and geographical distance of the climate crisis, in addition to its global nature, may lead individuals to deprioritising the risks associated with climate change, or becoming overwhelmed and disengaged – a state sometimes referred to as ‘eco-paralysis’.

An overactive midcingulate has been implicated in clinical anxiety disorders, and the new findings suggest that climate anxiety shares some of the same neural underpinnings. (It’s important to recall that climate anxiety seems to be distinct from generalised anxiety, though, as the brain differences observed in the Michigan study couldn’t be explained by overall anxiety levels.)

Ultimately, while speculative, these findings suggest that climate anxiety is not merely a sociocultural phenomenon, but one with theoretically identifiable neural correlates. They provide a potential biological framework for understanding why some people may be more psychologically impacted by climate change than others. And they raise intriguing questions about whether the brains of the climate anxious are particularly well-suited for confronting the existential threat of a warming world – or whether they are vulnerable to becoming overwhelmed by it. In all cases, though, they illustrate that world reaching inward.

T here is perhaps a flipside to be realised here. A changing climate is seeping into our very neurobiology. What might it mean to orient our neurobiology toward climate change?

Such is the premise of a 2023 article in Nature Climate Change by the neuroscientist Kimberly Doell at the University of Vienna in Austria and her colleagues, who argue that the field is well positioned to inform our understanding of climate-adaptation responses and pro-environmental decision-making. In the decades since Ruskin shook his fists at the sky, environmental neuroscience has begun to probe the reciprocal dance between organisms and their ecological niches. We know now that the textures of modern environments – green spaces, urban sprawl, socioeconomic strata – all leave their mark on the brain. Climate change is no different.

Accordingly, argue Doell et al, scientists and advocates alike can integrate findings from neuroscience to improve communications strategies aimed at spurring climate action. They want to turn the tables, taking advantage of insights from neurobiology and cognitive neuroscience to more effectively design climate solutions – both within ourselves and for society as a whole.

The Anthropocene’s fever dream is already warping our wetware

We have models for this type of approach. Poverty research, for instance, has long implicated socioeconomic conditions with subpar health. In more recent years, neuroscience has reverse-engineered the pathways by which poverty’s various insults – understimulation, toxic exposures, chronic stress – can erode neural architecture and derail cognitive development. Brain science alone won’t solve poverty, yet even a limited understanding of these mechanisms has spurred research in programmes like Head Start, a family-based preschool curriculum that has been shown to boost selective attention (as evident in electrophysiological recordings) and cognitive test scores. While the hydra of structural inequity is not easily slain, neuroscientists have managed to shine some light on poverty’s neural correlates, flag its reversible harms, and design precision remedies accordingly. This same potential, argue Doell and her colleagues, extends to the neuroscience of climate change.

To realise this potential, though, we need to further understand how the Anthropocene’s fever dream is already warping our wetware. Social and behavioural science have begun cataloguing the psychological fallout of a planet in flux, but a neural taxonomy of climate change awaits. The field’s methodological and conceptual arsenal is primed for the challenge, but honing it will demand alliances with climate science, medicine, psychology, political science and beyond.

Some are trying. For example, the Kavli Foundation in Los Angeles, US, recognising a need for answers, last year put out a call for scientists to investigate how neural systems are responding to ecological upheaval. With a trial $5 million, the foundation aims to illuminate how habitat loss, light pollution and other environmental insults may be influencing the molecular, cellular and circuit-level machinery of brains, human and otherwise. The central question is: in a biosphere where change is the only constant, are neural systems plastic enough to keep pace, or will they be left struggling to adapt?

The first wave of researchers to take up Kavli’s challenge are studying a diverse array of creatures, each uniquely positioned to reveal insights about the brain’s resilience in the face of planetary disruption. Wolfgang Stein at Illinois State University in the US and Steffen Harzsch at University of Greifswald in Germany, for example, focus on crustaceans, seeking to understand how their neural thermal regulators cope with rising temperatures in shallow and deep waters. Another group has targeted the brains of cephalopods, whose RNA-editing prowess may be key to their ability to tolerate plummeting oxygen levels in their increasingly suffocating aquatic habitats. A third Kavli cohort, led by Florence Kermen at University of Copenhagen in Denmark, is subjecting zebrafish to extreme temperatures, scouring their neurons and glial cells for the molecular signatures that allow them to thrive – even as their watery world heats up.

These initial investments have sparked federal curiosity. In December 2023, the US National Science Foundation joined forces with Kavli, inviting researchers to submit research proposals that seek to probe the ‘modulatory, homeostatic, adaptive, and/or evolutionary mechanisms that impact neurophysiology in response to anthropogenic environmental influence’. We may not be in arms-race territory yet, but at least there’s a suggestion that we’re beginning to walk in the right direction.

T he brain, that spongy command centre perched atop our spinal cord, has always been a black box. As the climate crisis tightens its grip, and the ecological ground beneath our feet grows ever more unsteady, the imperative to pry it open and peer inside grows more urgent by the day. Already, we’ve begun to glimpse the outlines of a new neural cartography, sketched in broad strokes by the likes of Sisodiya and his colleagues. We know now that the brain is less a static lump of self-regulating tissue than it is a dynamic, living landscape, its hills and valleys shaped by the contours of our environment. Just as the Greenland ice sheet groans and buckles under the heat of a changing climate, so too do our synapses wither and our neurons wink out as the mercury rises. Just as rising seas swallow coastlines, and forests succumb to drought and flame, the anatomical borders of our brains are redrawn by each new onslaught of environmental insult.

But the dialogue between brain and biosphere is not a one-way street. The choices we make, the behaviours we pursue, the ways in which we navigate a world in crisis – all of these decisions are reflected back onto the environment, for good or for ill. So, I offer: in seeking to understand how a changing climate moulds the contours of our minds, we must also reckon with how the architecture of our thoughts might be renovated in service of sustainability.

Bit by bit, synapse by synapse, we can chart a course through the gathering plague-cloud

The cartographers of the Anthropocene mind have their work cut out for them. But in the hands of neuroscience – with its shimmering brain scans and humming electrodes, its gene-editing precision and algorithmic might – there is something approaching a starting point. By tracing the pathways of environmental impact to their neural roots, and by following the cascading consequences of our mental processes back out into the world, we might yet begin to parse the tangled web that binds the fates of mind and planet.

This much is clear: as the gears of the climate crisis grind on, our brains will be swept along for the ride. The question is whether we’ll be mere passengers, or whether we’ll seize the controls and steer towards something resembling a liveable future. The weight of nature – the immensity of the crisis we face – is daunting. But it need not be paralysing. Bit by bit, synapse by synapse, we can chart a course through the gathering plague-clouds. It was Ruskin, at a slightly more legible moment in his life, who offered: ‘To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyse vitality.’ Even if we somehow could, we ought not banish the alleged imperfections of environmental influence on the mind. Instead, we ought to read in them an intimate, vital relationship between self and world.

In this, climatological neuroepidemiology – young and untested though it may be – is poised to play an outsized role. In gazing into the black box of the climate-altered mind, in illuminating the neural circuitry of our planetary predicament, the field offers something precious: a flicker of agency in a world that often feels as if it’s spinning out of control. It whispers that the levers of change are within reach, lodged in the squishy confines of our crania, waiting to be grasped. And it suggests that, even as the weight of nature presses down upon us, we might yet find a way to press back.

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Roz Pidcock

Which of the many thousands of papers on climate change published each year in scientific journals are the most successful? Which ones have done the most to advance scientists’ understanding, alter the course of climate change research, or inspire future generations?

On Wednesday, Carbon Brief will reveal the results of our analysis into which scientific papers on the topic of climate change are the most “cited”. That means, how many times other scientists have mentioned them in their own published research. It’s a pretty good measure of how much impact a paper has had in the science world.

But there are other ways to measure influence. Before we reveal the figures on the most-cited research, Carbon Brief has asked climate experts what they think are the most influential papers.

We asked all the coordinating lead authors, lead authors and review editors on the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report to nominate three papers from any time in history. This is the exact question we posed:

What do you consider to be the three most influential papers in the field of climate change?

As you might expect from a broad mix of physical scientists, economists, social scientists and policy experts, the nominations spanned a range of topics and historical periods, capturing some of the great climate pioneers and the very latest climate economics research.

Here’s a link to our summary of who said what . But one paper clearly takes the top spot.

Winner: Manabe & Wetherald ( 1967 )

With eight nominations, a seminal paper by Syukuro Manabe and Richard. T. Wetherald published in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences in 1967 tops the Carbon Brief poll as the IPCC scientists’ top choice for the most influential climate change paper of all time.

Entitled, “Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity”, the work was the first to represent the fundamental elements of the Earth’s climate in a computer model, and to explore what doubling carbon dioxide (CO2) would do to global temperature.

Manabe & Wetherald (1967), Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences

The Manabe & Wetherald paper is considered by many as a pioneering effort in the field of climate modelling, one that effectively opened the door to projecting future climate change. And the value of climate sensitivity is something climate scientists are still grappling with today .

Prof Piers Forster , a physical climate scientist at Leeds University and lead author of the chapter on clouds and aerosols in working group one of the last IPCC report, tells Carbon Brief:

This was really the first physically sound climate model allowing accurate predictions of climate change.

The paper’s findings have stood the test of time amazingly well, Forster says.

Its results are still valid today. Often when I’ve think I’ve done a new bit of work, I found that it had already been included in this paper.

Prof Steve Sherwood , expert in atmospheric climate dynamics at the University of New South Wales and another lead author on the clouds and aerosols chapter, says it’s a tough choice, but Manabe & Wetherald (1967) gets his vote, too. Sherwood tells Carbon Brief:

[The paper was] the first proper computation of global warming and stratospheric cooling from enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations, including atmospheric emission and water-vapour feedback.

Prof Danny Harvey , professor of climate modelling at the University of Toronto and lead author on the buildings chapter in the IPCC’s working group three report on mitigation, emphasises the Manabe & Wetherald paper’s impact on future generations of scientists. He says:

[The paper was] the first to assess the magnitude of the water vapour feedback, and was frequently cited for a good 20 years after it was published.

Tomorrow, Carbon Brief will be publishing an interview with Syukuro Manabe, alongside a special summary by Prof John Mitchell , the Met Office Hadley Centre’s chief scientist from 2002 to 2008 and director of climate science from 2008 to 2010, on why the paper still holds such significance today.

Joint second: Keeling, C.D et al. ( 1976 )

Jumping forward a decade, a classic paper by Charles Keeling and colleagues in 1976 came in joint second place in the Carbon Brief survey.

Published in the journal Tellus under the title, “Atmospheric carbon dioxide variations at Mauna Loa observatory,” the paper documented for the first time the stark rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii.

A photocopy of Keeling et al., (1976) Source: University of California, Santa Cruz

Dr Jorge Carrasco , Antarctic climate change researcher at the University of Magallanes  in Chile and lead author on the cryosphere chapter in the last IPCC report, tells Carbon Brief why the research underpinning the “Keeling Curve’ was so important.

This paper revealed for the first time the observing increased of the atmospheric CO2 as the result of the combustion of carbon, petroleum and natural gas.

Prof David Stern , energy and environmental economist at the Australian National University and lead author on the Drivers, Trends and Mitigation chapter of the IPCC’s working group three report, also chooses the 1976 Keeling paper, though he notes:

This is a really tough question as there are so many dimensions to the climate problem – natural science, social science, policy etc.

With the Mauna Loa measurements continuing today , the so-called “Keeling curve” is the longest continuous record of carbon dioxide concentration in the world. Its historical significance and striking simplicity has made it one of the most iconic visualisations of climate change.

Source: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Also in joint second place: Held, I.M. & Soden, B.J. ( 2006 )

Fast forwarding a few decades, in joint second place comes a paper by Isaac Held and Brian Soden published in the journal Science in 2006.

The paper, “Robust Responses of the Hydrological Cycle to Global Warming”, identified how rainfall from one place to another would be affected by climate change. Prof Sherwood, who nominated this paper as well as the winning one from Manabe and Wetherald, tells Carbon Brief why it represented an important step forward. He says:

[This paper] advanced what is known as the “wet-get-wetter, dry-get-drier” paradigm for precipitation in global warming. This mantra has been widely misunderstood and misapplied, but was the first and perhaps still the only systematic conclusion about regional precipitation and global warming based on robust physical understanding of the atmosphere.

Held & Soden (2006), Journal of Climate

Honourable mentions

Rather than choosing a single paper, quite a few academics in our survey nominated one or more of the Working Group contributions to the last IPCC report. A couple even suggested the Fifth Assessment Report in its entirety, running to several thousands of pages. The original IPCC report , published in 1990, also got mentioned.

It was clear from the results that scientists tended to pick papers related to their own field. For example, Prof Ottmar Edenhofer , chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of the IPCC’s Working Group Three report on mitigation, selected four papers from the last 20 years on the economics of climate change costs versus risks, recent emissions trends, the technological feasibility of strong emissions reductions and the nature of international climate cooperation.

Taking a historical perspective, a few more of the early pioneers of climate science featured in our results, too. For example, Svante Arrhenius’ famous 1896 paper  on the Greenhouse Effect, entitled “On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground”, received a couple of votes.

Prof Jonathan Wiener , environmental policy expert at Duke University in the US and lead author on the International Cooperation chapter in the IPCC’s working group three report, explains why this paper should be remembered as one of the most influential in climate policy. He says:

[This is the] classic paper showing that rising greenhouse gas concentrations lead to increasing global average surface temperature.

Svante Arrhenius (1896), Philosophical Magazine

A few decades later, a paper by Guy Callendar in 1938  linked the increase in carbon dioxide concentration over the previous 50 years to rising temperatures. Entitled, “The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature,” the paper marked an important step forward in climate change research, says Andrew Solow , director of the Woods Hole Marine Policy centre and lead author on the detection and attribution of climate impacts chapter in the IPCC’s working group two report. He says:

There is earlier work on the greenhouse effect, but not (to my knowledge) on the connection between increasing levels of CO2 and temperature.

Though it may feature in the climate change literature hall of fame, this paper raises a question about how to define a paper’s influence, says Forster. Rather than being celebrated among his contemporaries, Callendar’s work achieved recognition a long time after it was published. Forster says:

I would loved to have chosen Callendar (1938) as the first attribution paper that changed the world. Unfortunately, the 1938 effort of Callendar was only really recognised afterwards as being a founding publication of the field … The same comment applies to earlier Arrhenius and Tyndall efforts. They were only influential in hindsight.

Guy Callendar and his 1938 paper in Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society

Other honourable mentions in the Carbon Brief survey of most influential climate papers go to Norman Phillips, whose 1956 paper described the first general circulation model, William Nordhaus’s 1991 paper on the economics of the greenhouse effect, and a paper by Camile Parmesan and Gary Yohe in 2003 , considered by many to provide the first formal attribution of climate change impacts on animal and plant species.

Finally, James Hansen’s 2012 paper , “Public perception of climate change and the new climate dice”, was important in highlighting the real-world impacts of climate change, says Prof Andy Challinor , expert in climate change impacts at the University of Leeds and lead author on the food security chapter in the working group two report. He says:

[It] helped with demonstrating the strong links between extreme events this century and climate change. Result: more clarity and less hedging.

Marc Levi , a political scientist at Columbia University and lead author on the IPCC’s human security chapter, makes a wider point, telling Carbon Brief:

The importance is in showing that climate change is observable in the present.

Indeed, attribution of extreme weather continues to be at the forefront of climate science, pushing scientists’ understanding of the climate system and modern technology to their limits.

Look out for more on the latest in attribution research as Carbon Brief reports on the Our Common Futures Under Climate Change conference taking place in Paris this week.

Pinning down which climate science papers most changed the world is difficult, and we suspect climate scientists could argue about this all day. But while the question elicits a range of very personal preferences, stories and characters, one paper has clearly stood the test of time and emerged as the popular choice among today’s climate experts – Manabe and Wetherald, 1967.

Main image: Satellite image of Hurricane Katrina.

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Essay on Global Warming

• Updated on  
• Apr 27, 2024

Being able to write an essay is an integral part of mastering any language. Essays form an integral part of many academic and scholastic exams like the SAT, and UPSC amongst many others. It is a crucial evaluative part of English proficiency tests as well like IELTS, TOEFL, etc. Major essays are meant to emphasize public issues of concern that can have significant consequences on the world. To understand the concept of Global Warming and its causes and effects, we must first examine the many factors that influence the planet’s temperature and what this implies for the world’s future. Here’s an unbiased look at the essay on Global Warming and other essential related topics.

Short Essay on Global Warming and Climate Change?

Since the industrial and scientific revolutions, Earth’s resources have been gradually depleted. Furthermore, the start of the world’s population’s exponential expansion is particularly hard on the environment. Simply put, as the population’s need for consumption grows, so does the use of natural resources , as well as the waste generated by that consumption.

Climate change has been one of the most significant long-term consequences of this. Climate change is more than just the rise or fall of global temperatures; it also affects rain cycles, wind patterns, cyclone frequencies, sea levels, and other factors. It has an impact on all major life groupings on the planet.

Also Read: Essay on Yoga Day

Also Read: Speech on Yoga Day

What is Global Warming?

Global warming is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century, primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels . The greenhouse gases consist of methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, water vapour, and chlorofluorocarbons. The weather prediction has been becoming more complex with every passing year, with seasons more indistinguishable, and the general temperatures hotter.

The number of hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, floods, etc., has risen steadily since the onset of the 21st century. The supervillain behind all these changes is Global Warming. The name is quite self-explanatory; it means the rise in the temperature of the Earth.

Also Read: What is a Natural Disaster?

What are the Causes of Global Warming?

According to recent studies, many scientists believe the following are the primary four causes of global warming:

• Deforestation 
• Greenhouse emissions
• Carbon emissions per capita

Extreme global warming is causing natural disasters , which can be seen all around us. One of the causes of global warming is the extreme release of greenhouse gases that become trapped on the earth’s surface, causing the temperature to rise. Similarly, volcanoes contribute to global warming by spewing excessive CO2 into the atmosphere.

The increase in population is one of the major causes of Global Warming. This increase in population also leads to increased air pollution . Automobiles emit a lot of CO2, which remains in the atmosphere. This increase in population is also causing deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

The earth’s surface emits energy into the atmosphere in the form of heat, keeping the balance with the incoming energy. Global warming depletes the ozone layer, bringing about the end of the world. There is a clear indication that increased global warming will result in the extinction of all life on Earth’s surface.

Also Read: Land, Soil, Water, Natural Vegetation, and Wildlife Resources

Solutions for Global Warming

Of course, industries and multinational conglomerates emit more carbon than the average citizen. Nonetheless, activism and community effort are the only viable ways to slow the worsening effects of global warming. Furthermore, at the state or government level, world leaders must develop concrete plans and step-by-step programmes to ensure that no further harm is done to the environment in general.

Although we are almost too late to slow the rate of global warming, finding the right solution is critical. Everyone, from individuals to governments, must work together to find a solution to Global Warming. Some of the factors to consider are pollution control, population growth, and the use of natural resources.

One very important contribution you can make is to reduce your use of plastic. Plastic is the primary cause of global warming, and recycling it takes years. Another factor to consider is deforestation, which will aid in the control of global warming. More tree planting should be encouraged to green the environment. Certain rules should also govern industrialization. Building industries in green zones that affect plants and species should be prohibited.

Also Read: Essay on Pollution

Effects of Global Warming

Global warming is a real problem that many people want to disprove to gain political advantage. However, as global citizens, we must ensure that only the truth is presented in the media.

This decade has seen a significant impact from global warming. The two most common phenomena observed are glacier retreat and arctic shrinkage. Glaciers are rapidly melting. These are clear manifestations of climate change.

Another significant effect of global warming is the rise in sea level. Flooding is occurring in low-lying areas as a result of sea-level rise. Many countries have experienced extreme weather conditions. Every year, we have unusually heavy rain, extreme heat and cold, wildfires, and other natural disasters.

Similarly, as global warming continues, marine life is being severely impacted. This is causing the extinction of marine species as well as other problems. Furthermore, changes are expected in coral reefs, which will face extinction in the coming years. These effects will intensify in the coming years, effectively halting species expansion. Furthermore, humans will eventually feel the negative effects of Global Warming.

Also Read: Concept of Sustainable Development

Sample Essays on Global Warming

Here are some sample essays on Global Warming:

Essay on Global Warming Paragraph in 100 – 150 words

Global Warming is caused by the increase of carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere and is a result of human activities that have been causing harm to our environment for the past few centuries now. Global Warming is something that can’t be ignored and steps have to be taken to tackle the situation globally. The average temperature is constantly rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the last few years.

The best method to prevent future damage to the earth, cutting down more forests should be banned and Afforestation should be encouraged. Start by planting trees near your homes and offices, participate in events, and teach the importance of planting trees. It is impossible to undo the damage but it is possible to stop further harm.

Also Read: Social Forestry

Essay on Global Warming in 250 Words

Over a long period, it is observed that the temperature of the earth is increasing. This affected wildlife, animals, humans, and every living organism on earth. Glaciers have been melting, and many countries have started water shortages, flooding, and erosion and all this is because of global warming. 

No one can be blamed for global warming except for humans. Human activities such as gases released from power plants, transportation, and deforestation have increased gases such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere.                                              The main question is how can we control the current situation and build a better world for future generations. It starts with little steps by every individual. 

Start using cloth bags made from sustainable materials for all shopping purposes, instead of using high-watt lights use energy-efficient bulbs, switch off the electricity, don’t waste water, abolish deforestation and encourage planting more trees. Shift the use of energy from petroleum or other fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. Instead of throwing out the old clothes donate them to someone so that it is recycled. 

Donate old books, don’t waste paper.  Above all, spread awareness about global warming. Every little thing a person does towards saving the earth will contribute in big or small amounts. We must learn that 1% effort is better than no effort. Pledge to take care of Mother Nature and speak up about global warming.

Also Read: Types of Water Pollution

Essay on Global Warming in 500 Words

Global warming isn’t a prediction, it is happening! A person denying it or unaware of it is in the most simple terms complicit. Do we have another planet to live on? Unfortunately, we have been bestowed with this one planet only that can sustain life yet over the years we have turned a blind eye to the plight it is in. Global warming is not an abstract concept but a global phenomenon occurring ever so slowly even at this moment. Global Warming is a phenomenon that is occurring every minute resulting in a gradual increase in the Earth’s overall climate. Brought about by greenhouse gases that trap the solar radiation in the atmosphere, global warming can change the entire map of the earth, displacing areas, flooding many countries, and destroying multiple lifeforms. Extreme weather is a direct consequence of global warming but it is not an exhaustive consequence. There are virtually limitless effects of global warming which are all harmful to life on earth. The sea level is increasing by 0.12 inches per year worldwide. This is happening because of the melting of polar ice caps because of global warming. This has increased the frequency of floods in many lowland areas and has caused damage to coral reefs. The Arctic is one of the worst-hit areas affected by global warming. Air quality has been adversely affected and the acidity of the seawater has also increased causing severe damage to marine life forms. Severe natural disasters are brought about by global warming which has had dire effects on life and property. As long as mankind produces greenhouse gases, global warming will continue to accelerate. The consequences are felt at a much smaller scale which will increase to become drastic shortly. The power to save the day lies in the hands of humans, the need is to seize the day. Energy consumption should be reduced on an individual basis. Fuel-efficient cars and other electronics should be encouraged to reduce the wastage of energy sources. This will also improve air quality and reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Global warming is an evil that can only be defeated when fought together. It is better late than never. If we all take steps today, we will have a much brighter future tomorrow. Global warming is the bane of our existence and various policies have come up worldwide to fight it but that is not enough. The actual difference is made when we work at an individual level to fight it. Understanding its import now is crucial before it becomes an irrevocable mistake. Exterminating global warming is of utmost importance and each one of us is as responsible for it as the next.  

Also Read: Essay on Library: 100, 200 and 250 Words

Essay on Global Warming UPSC

Always hear about global warming everywhere, but do we know what it is? The evil of the worst form, global warming is a phenomenon that can affect life more fatally. Global warming refers to the increase in the earth’s temperature as a result of various human activities. The planet is gradually getting hotter and threatening the existence of lifeforms on it. Despite being relentlessly studied and researched, global warming for the majority of the population remains an abstract concept of science. It is this concept that over the years has culminated in making global warming a stark reality and not a concept covered in books. Global warming is not caused by one sole reason that can be curbed. Multifarious factors cause global warming most of which are a part of an individual’s daily existence. Burning of fuels for cooking, in vehicles, and for other conventional uses, a large amount of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, and methane amongst many others is produced which accelerates global warming. Rampant deforestation also results in global warming as lesser green cover results in an increased presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is a greenhouse gas.  Finding a solution to global warming is of immediate importance. Global warming is a phenomenon that has to be fought unitedly. Planting more trees can be the first step that can be taken toward warding off the severe consequences of global warming. Increasing the green cover will result in regulating the carbon cycle. There should be a shift from using nonrenewable energy to renewable energy such as wind or solar energy which causes less pollution and thereby hinder the acceleration of global warming. Reducing energy needs at an individual level and not wasting energy in any form is the most important step to be taken against global warming. The warning bells are tolling to awaken us from the deep slumber of complacency we have slipped into. Humans can fight against nature and it is high time we acknowledged that. With all our scientific progress and technological inventions, fighting off the negative effects of global warming is implausible. We have to remember that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors but borrow it from our future generations and the responsibility lies on our shoulders to bequeath them a healthy planet for life to exist. 

Also Read: Essay on Disaster Management

Climate Change and Global Warming Essay

Global Warming and Climate Change are two sides of the same coin. Both are interrelated with each other and are two issues of major concern worldwide. Greenhouse gases released such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere cause Global Warming which leads to climate change. Black holes have started to form in the ozone layer that protects the earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. 

Human activities have created climate change and global warming. Industrial waste and fumes are the major contributors to global warming. 

Another factor affecting is the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and also one of the reasons for climate change.  Global warming has resulted in shrinking mountain glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic and causing climate change. Switching from the use of fossil fuels to energy sources like wind and solar. 

When buying any electronic appliance buy the best quality with energy savings stars. Don’t waste water and encourage rainwater harvesting in your community. 

Also Read: Essay on Air Pollution

Tips to Write an Essay

Writing an effective essay needs skills that few people possess and even fewer know how to implement. While writing an essay can be an assiduous task that can be unnerving at times, some key pointers can be inculcated to draft a successful essay. These involve focusing on the structure of the essay, planning it out well, and emphasizing crucial details.

Mentioned below are some pointers that can help you write better structure and more thoughtful essays that will get across to your readers:

• Prepare an outline for the essay to ensure continuity and relevance and no break in the structure of the essay
• Decide on a thesis statement that will form the basis of your essay. It will be the point of your essay and help readers understand your contention
• Follow the structure of an introduction, a detailed body followed by a conclusion so that the readers can comprehend the essay in a particular manner without any dissonance.
• Make your beginning catchy and include solutions in your conclusion to make the essay insightful and lucrative to read
• Reread before putting it out and add your flair to the essay to make it more personal and thereby unique and intriguing for readers  

Also Read: I Love My India Essay: 100 and 500+ Words in English for School Students

Ans. Both natural and man-made factors contribute to global warming. The natural one also contains methane gas, volcanic eruptions, and greenhouse gases. Deforestation, mining, livestock raising, burning fossil fuels, and other man-made causes are next.

Ans. The government and the general public can work together to stop global warming. Trees must be planted more often, and deforestation must be prohibited. Auto usage needs to be curbed, and recycling needs to be promoted.

Ans. Switching to renewable energy sources , adopting sustainable farming, transportation, and energy methods, and conserving water and other natural resources.

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Digvijay Singh

Having 2+ years of experience in educational content writing, withholding a Bachelor's in Physical Education and Sports Science and a strong interest in writing educational content for students enrolled in domestic and foreign study abroad programmes. I believe in offering a distinct viewpoint to the table, to help students deal with the complexities of both domestic and foreign educational systems. Through engaging storytelling and insightful analysis, I aim to inspire my readers to embark on their educational journeys, whether abroad or at home, and to make the most of every learning opportunity that comes their way.

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This was really a good essay on global warming… There has been used many unic words..and I really liked it!!!Seriously I had been looking for a essay about Global warming just like this…

Thank you for the comment!

I want to learn how to write essay writing so I joined this page.This page is very useful for everyone.

Hi, we are glad that we could help you to write essays. We have a beginner’s guide to write essays ( https://leverageedu.com/blog/essay-writing/ ) and we think this might help you.

It is not good , to have global warming in our earth .So we all have to afforestation program on all the world.

thank you so much

Very educative , helpful and it is really going to strength my English knowledge to structure my essay in future

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