With the courtesy of the World Bank Group, here is a quote from an article from the Climate Change Knowledge Portal For Development Practitioner and Policy Makers;
“Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the known history of the climate, primarily as a result of human activities. There is scientific consensus that unmitigated carbon emissions will lead to global warming of at least several degrees Celsius by 2100, resulting in high-impacts of local, regional and global risks to human society and natural ecosystems. Global climate change has already resulted in a wide range of impacts across every region of the earth as well as many economic sectors.
Impacts related to climate change are evident across regions and in many sectors important to society, such as human health, agriculture and food security, water supply, transportation, energy, and biodiversity and ecosystems; impacts are expected to become increasingly disruptive in the coming decades. There is very high confidence that the frequency and intensity of extreme heat and heavy precipitation events are increasing in most continental regions of the world. These trends are consistent with expected physical responses to a warming climate. The frequency and intensity of extreme high temperature events are virtually certain to increase in the future as global temperature increases. There is high confidence that extreme precipitation events will very likely continue to increase in frequency and intensity throughout most of the world. Observed and projected trends for other types of extreme events, such as floods, droughts, and severe storms, have more variable regional characteristics.
What is Climate Change
Observed changes over the 20th century include increases in global air and ocean temperature, rising global sea levels, long-term sustained widespread reduction of snow and ice cover, and changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation as well as regional weather patterns, which influence seasonal rainfall conditions. These changes are caused by extra heat in the climate system due to the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. These additional greenhouse gases are primarily input by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), deforestation, agriculture, and land-use changes. These activities increase the amount of ‘heat-trapping’ greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The pattern of observed changes in the climate system is consistent with an increased greenhouse effect. Other climatic influences such as volcanoes, the sun and natural variability cannot alone explain the timing and extent of the observed changes.
Climate, refers to the long-term regional or global average of temperature, humidity and rainfall patterns over seasons, years or decades.”