TellUs: What are we acting on? Climate change, mean temperatures & the greenhouse gas effect

What are we acting on? Climate change, rising global temperatures and the greenhouse effect in a nutshell.

Media today is littered with bits and bobs about the Earth’s decline: how temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting, animals are becoming extinct, weather patterns are more extreme and how we need to act now. Recently Britain even declared a climate emergency, with others countries seemingly following suit. But what does it all mean and why do we need to do anything about this vast, mysterious subject? It’s great that there is this exposure within the media, however people are only getting segments of a bigger and very serious picture. It can feel very overwhelming when it feels like you’re being told to take action on something you don’t fully understand and rightly so. Climate change and environmental issues are a huge topic with many factors - big and small. So today I wanted to create a blog that explains, in a nutshell, what it is we are acting on. 

Let’s start with the most common phrase, “climate change”. Let’s be honest, we hear it day in and day out but probably don’t know for sure what it actually means. Climate change is the variation in global climate over a period of time, typically longer than a decade. It is used to refer to changes in the climate, attributed to human activity, that alters the composition of the atmosphere (this is also related to the greenhouse effect). These changes can be to do with temperature (referred to as global warming), rainfall, wind and so on and is likely to result in more extreme weather events worldwide. Therefore climate change can be used as an umbrella term and often is, as it encompasses many elements which I will break down further now!

As well as climate change we are also acting on the increase of the global mean surface temperature. The basic measure of global warming is the rise of the average or mean surface temperature of the Earth - the rising average world temperature. The mean temperature of the Earth is quoted at 15^oC, which however is rising and has been significantly for the past fifty years or so. To define the global mean surface temperature, air temperature is measured by instruments close to the ground, over both sea and land which is then averaged out over the entire planet. 

Lastly we need to look at the greenhouse effect which was referred to above. This is an intricate topic that I will explain a lot more thoroughly in another blog, however wanted to discuss it simply today as a brief overview. The greenhouse effect is the warming difference that occurs in the atmosphere, due to the difference gases that make up the atmosphere. Therefore it sounds very similar to global warming and both can be hard to distinguish between one another. Remember, the greenhouse effect is more in relation to how heat in retained in the atmosphere whereas global warming is simply the increase of annual temperatures. The greenhouse effect it is predominantly a natural mechanism, existing for as long as the Earth has had an atmosphere. However now it is being modified by human activity, whereby solar radiation is trapped by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses within the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s very much like how heat gets trapped by glass within a greenhouse… although of course on a much larger scale!

Although there are a lot more environmental topics we are hoping and needing to act on in order to battle this climate crisis, here are three main issues that are all over the media that need explaining. How are we meant to help, act and spread environmental awareness when we ourselves can’t explain the core issues at hand? Therefore I hope this beginners guide to climate change, global mean surface temperature and the greenhouse effect are now clearer in your mind and easier to understand at a base level. I am planning to write future blogs about these topics that are more in depth, explaining the science behind them, how they are exacerbated and what harm they do, so look out for them!

I hope this blog was helpful to you and I hope to see you in the next one!