Use of the term "global warming" generally implies a human influence — the more neutral term climate change is usually used for a change in climate with no presumption as to cause and no characterization of the kind of change involved. Sometimes the term anthropogenic climate change is used to indicate the presumption of human influence. The Kyoto Protocol proposes binding greenhouse gas limits for developed countries.

Note that although the discussion often focusses on temperature, global warming or any climate change implies changes in other variables: overall precipitation and its patterns, cloud cover, weather, and all the other elements of our atmospheric system will be impacted by the increase in " radiative forcing" due to human changes in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

Possible explanations for observations of global warming are discussed in attribution of recent climate change.

1 Scientific opinion

Since it is such an important issue, governments need predictions of future trends in global change so they can take political decisions to avoid undesired impacts. Global warming is being studied by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC does not commission or carry out research itself, but rather disseminates the body of published research. The reports reflect the consensus of the published science. The 1995 IPCC report concluded that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate"; this was strengthened in the 2001 TARTAR can mean: An abbreviation for Tar file format The Amazing Race a reality television program An abbreviation for Tibet Autonomous Region The Third Assessment Report of the IPCC TLAs. to "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities".

A survey in 1996 by Dennis Bray and Hans von StorchHans von Storch is a German climate scientist. His team published an article in the September 30th, 2004 issue of Science that argued that the temperature variations in the past 1000 years were probably much bigger than previously anticipated. of the Meteorologisches Institut der Universitat Hamburg generated responses from over 400 German, American and Canadian climate researchers and was reported in the United Nations Climate Change Bulletin . See scientific opinion of global warming for further discussion of this and other opinion surveys of scientists. The survey reported the response of scientists in this field, to the statement that it is "certain that, without change in human behavior, global warming will definitely occur sometime in the future". Scientists polled gave this statement an average score of 2.6 on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 indicated complete agreement and 7 indicated complete disagreement.

2 Temperature records

The period of time over which the change has been observed may vary according to the focus of the user of the term: sometime since the Industrial RevolutionThe Industrial Revolution is the name given to the massive social, economic, and technological change in 18th century and 19th century Great Britain. It commenced with the introduction of steam power (fuelled primarily by coal) and powered, automated mach, or since the beginning of an approximately global historical temperature record in about 1860; or over the past century; or the most recent 50 years.

Over the past 20,000 years the dominant temperature signal has been the end of the last ice age, approximately 12,000 years ago [1]. Since then the temperature has been quite stable, though with various fluctuations, e.g. Medieval Warm PeriodThe Medieval Warm Period (MWP or Medieval Climate Optimum was an unusually warm period in history lasting from about the 10th century to about the 14th century. During this time wine grapes were grown in Europe up to 300 miles north of their present north or Little Ice AgeThe Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling lasting approximately from the mid- 14th to the mid- 19th centuries. This cooling brought an end to an unusually warm era known as the Medieval climate optimum. It was initially assumed that the LIA was a g. Over the past century or so the global (land + sea) temperature has increased by approximately 0.4–0.8 °C [2]. For details over the last century see the article historical temperature record; for the longer term see Temperature record of the past 1000 years; for attribution see anthropogenic climate change.

Temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased at somewhere between 0.08 and 0.22 °/decade since 1979 (see Satellite temperature measurements). Just like the surface record, the average temperature rise is not linear, but has superimposed on it rises and falls due to natural variability, most notably El nino's. Over the same period the surface record shows a warming of approximately 0.15 °C/decade [3].

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