The Proof is in Science

by Madeline
(St. Paul, Minnesota)

The twentieth century was the warmest of the past 1,000 years. Most of this warming came from human activities according to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on climate change.

Global warming is increased atmospheric carbon dioxide from industries and motor vehicles. Carbon dioxide is now the highest focus in at least 420,000 years, by studies of gases trapped in ancient ice.

So far, the global average temperature has risen 1.4 degrees F since 1750. In January, a study involving 95,000 participants from 150 countries concluded that greenhouse gases could raise global temperatures as much as 20 degrees F by 2100. The result major droughts, sea levels, and crop failures. This prediction should be raised from concerns among policymakers, because other predictions those scientists have made in recent years about the natural effects that rising temperatures would produce are coming true, confirming that global warming is here.

Among the forecasts: global warming will take place most rapidly and intensively at the poles, glaciers, and ice sheets will melt, sea level will rise, precipitation patterns will change, storms and floods will become more frequent and severe, and some plants and animals will shift their ranges northward or up mountainsides to escape rising heat.

The rate in the arctic as eight times faster during the past 20 years than during the previous 100 years and is happening at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the earth. Average winter temperatures in Alaska and western Canada have risen by as much as 7 degrees F during the past 60 years.

Bushes have been moving into the tundra, where the cold temperatures historically kept them out. Since shrubs absorb more solar heat than does tundra, they may compound the effects of global warming there.

Average temperature in the Antarctica has increased by as 4.5 degrees F since the 1940’s, among the fastest rates of change in the world.
The calving of icebergs from ice shelves is a normal event, but complete breakdown of shelves that scientists believe may have been as much as 12,000 years old is not.


The extent of Arctic sea ice in September 2004 was more than 13 percent below average, yielding the most wasted sea ice of the past half century. The sea ice now is melting 20 percent faster than it did two decades ago.
The lowest elevation for freezing among mid-latitude mountains, such as the U.S Rockies and the European Alps, had shifted upward by almost 500 feet since 1970.

Some 80 percent of the snowcap of Kenya’s Mount Kilimanjaro had disappeared, and the 150 glaciers that studded Glacier National Park in Montana in 1910 have been reduced to fewer than 30.

Annual precipitation in southern New England has increased by more than 25 percent during the past century, while snowfall in northern New England had decreased by 15 percent since 1953. Snow lies on the ground in New England for seven days less per year than it did 50 years ago. Severe droughts today affect 30 percent of the Earth’s surface, compared to 10 to 15 percent 35 years ago, a change that climate scientists blame in large part on rising temperatures. Snowfall in Australia has declined by 30 percent during the past 40 years. Lakes in Pennsylvania freeze on average about 10 days later than they did 50 years ago and melt about 9 days earlier.

Sea temperatures have risen up to 2 degrees F during the past 20 years, although the connection to global warming has yet to be determined. The mean of global sea level has risen as much as 7.8 inches the past century.

Editor's note:
Very comprehensive Madeline. Thank you. But please note, this page is specifically for reporting LOCAL effects of global warming that you observe or are aware of.