Electricity generated from non-carbon-emitting sources will need to replace fossil fuels for powering transportation, heating buildings, and operating industrial facilities. This includes phasing out coal-fired power plants, vastly increasing use of wind, solar, and other types of renewable energy, and taking measures to reduce energy use. Making deep cuts in emissions will require switching away from burning fossil fuels and towards using electricity generated from low-carbon sources. Some effects of climate change, clockwise from top left: Wildfire intensified by heat and drought, worsening droughts compromising water supplies, and bleaching of coral caused by ocean acidification and heating. Limiting warming to 1.5 ☌ will require halving emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. However, with pledges made under the Agreement, global warming would still reach about 2.7 ☌ (4.9 ☏) by the end of the century. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations collectively agreed to keep warming "well under 2 ☌". Additional warming will increase these impacts and may trigger tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Many of these impacts are already felt at the current 1.2 ☌ (2.2 ☏) level of warming. These include sea level rise, and warmer, more acidic oceans. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other weather extremes. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Adding to these gases traps more heat near the Earth's surface, causing global warming.ĭue to climate change, deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices increase greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. The current rise in global average temperature is more rapid than previous changes, and is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. In common usage, climate change describes global warming-the ongoing increase in global average temperature-and its impacts on Earth's climate system. Human activity has caused increased temperatures, with natural forces adding some variability. Change in average surface air temperature since the industrial revolution, plus drivers for that change.
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