• Question: Could the melting of ice caps and climate changes be natural

    Asked by phsycics108 to Cat?, Elaine, Helena, Iain, Gabriel on 7 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Cat Scott ?

      Cat Scott ? answered on 7 Mar 2016:

      Great question!

      Some climate changes are natural, for example the amount of heat and light we get from the Sun does vary slightly over time (this happens because sometimes the Earth is slightly closer or further away from the Sun, and because of cycles in the Sun’s activity). Volcanoes can also affect the climate by injecting carbon dioxide and particles into the air.

      However, when scientists add the effects of these things together, it doesn’t add up to what we see happening in real-life.

      Check out this website for a great graphic of how the global temperature has changed over the past century:
      http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/

      It’s only when you add in the “human factors” that scientists are able to make a graph that matches what has been observed in reality.

    • Photo: Helena Quilter

      Helena Quilter answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Hi there!

      As Cat says there have always natural changes in the climate. You may not know but in Medieval times we had what people called a “Little Ice Age” – where global temperatures were colder than normal and rivers used to freeze over for the winter, which doesn’t happen now. That happened right after a warmer than normal period, when it was warmer than it is right now.

      There are some people that think climate change is natural but most scientists believe that at the minute the temperature is increasing because of human activity.

      The temperatures have been steadily increasing over the last century since we started using fossil fuels (that’s things like oil, coal and gas that we get from the ground) for our energy. When we burn things like coal they produce carbon dioxide gas (CO2), which is thought to be linked to climate change. It’s the fact that the temperature has been increasing steadily combined with us producing CO2 that’s worrying!

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