Energy-Economy-Environment Nexus
Climate Change
Climate: The long-term regional or global average of temperature, humidity and rainfall patterns over seasons, years
or decades known as climate.
Climate change is a long-term shift in weather conditions identified by changes in temperature, precipitation, winds,
and other indicators. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions.
Climate change can involve both changes in average conditions and changes in variability, including, for example,
frequency of extreme events. But since the 1800s, human activities (anthropogenic activities) have been the main
driver of climate change, primarily due to burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas.
• Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping
the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.
• Climate change can affect our health, ability to grow food, housing, safety and work.
Global Temperature
rise from 1880 to 2022
Future Global Temperature
• The World Meteorological Organization estimates a 66% chance of global temperatures exceeding 1.5 °C warming from the preindustrial
baseline for at least one year between 2023 and 2027. Because the IPCC uses a 20-year average to define global temperature changes, a
single year exceeding 1.5 °C does not break the limit.
• The IPCC expects the 20-year average global temperature to exceed +1.5 °C in the early 2030s. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2023)
included projections that by 2100 global warming is very likely to reach 1.0-1.8 °C under a scenario with very low emissions of greenhouse
gases, 2.1-3.5 °C under an intermediate emissions scenario, or 3.3-5.7 °C under a very high emissions scenario. The warming will continue
past 2100 in the intermediate and high emission scenarios, with future projections of global surface temperatures by year 2300 being possibly
6.6°C–14.1°C higher than over the period 1850–1900, similar to Miocene and Early Eocene climatic optimums. On a thousand-year scale,
sea levels could rise by 2 m even with warming of 1.5°C–2°C, and by tens of meters with more intense warming.
• The remaining carbon budget for staying beneath certain temperature increases is determined by modelling the carbon cycle and climate
sensitivity to greenhouse gases. According to the IPCC, global warming can be kept below 1.5 °C with a two-thirds chance if emissions after
2018 do not exceed 420 or 570 gigatonnes of CO2. This corresponds to 10 to 13 years of current emissions. There are high uncertainties about
the budget. For instance, it may be 100 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent smaller due to CO2 and methane release
from permafrost and wetlands. However, it is clear that fossil fuel resources need to be proactively kept in the ground to prevent substantial
warming. Otherwise, their shortages would not occur until the emissions have already locked in significant long-term impacts.
Causes of Recent Global Temperature Rise
• The climate system experiences various cycles on its own which can last for years, decades or even
centuries. For example, El Niño events cause short-term spikes in surface temperature while La
Niña events cause short term cooling. Their relative frequency can affect global temperature trends on
a decadal timescale. Other changes are caused by an imbalance of energy from external
forcings. Examples of these include changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases, solar
luminosity, volcanic eruptions, and variations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
• To determine the human contribution to climate change, unique "fingerprints" for all potential causes
are developed and compared with both observed patterns and known internal climate variability. For
example, solar forcing—whose fingerprint involves warming the entire atmosphere—is ruled out
because only the lower atmosphere has warmed. Atmospheric aerosols produce a smaller, cooling
effect. Other drivers, such as changes in albedo, are less impactful.
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With significant reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), global annual averaged
temperature rise could be limited to 2 °C or less. However, without major reductions in these
emissions, the increase in annual average global temperatures, relative to pre-industrial times,
could reach 5 °C or more by the end of this century.
Physical drivers of global warming that has happened so far. Future global warming
potential for long lived drivers like carbon dioxide emissions is not represented.
Whiskers on each bar show the possible error range.
Effects of climate change
Green House Gasses (GHGs)
➢ Greenhouse gases (also known as GHGs)
are gases in the earth's atmosphere that trap heat.
➢ Greenhouse gases are transparent to sunlight, and
thus allow it to pass through the atmosphere to
heat the Earth's surface. The Earth radiates it as
heat, and greenhouse gases absorb a portion of it.
This absorption slows the rate at which heat
escapes into space, trapping heat near the Earth's
surface and warming it over time.
➢ Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous
oxide, and various synthetic chemicals are the
major GHGs.
➢ CO2 emissions primarily come from burning fossil
fuels to provide energy for transport,
manufacturing, heating, and electricity Additional Fig. Gases Which create the greenhouse
CO2 emissions come effect
from deforestation and industrial processes.
➢ Methane emissions come from livestock,
manure, rice cultivation, landfills, wastewater,
and coal mining, as well as oil and gas extraction.
➢ Nitrous oxide emissions largely come from the
microbial decomposition of fertilizer.
The carbon cycle
➢ The carbon cycle is that part of
the biogeochemical cycle by
which carbon is exchanged among
the biosphere, pedosphere, geosphere,
hydrosphere, and atmosphere of Earth.
Carbon is the main component of
biological compounds as well as a
major component of many minerals
such as limestone.
➢ The carbon cycle comprises a
sequence of events that are key to
making Earth capable of sustaining
life.
➢ Carbon dioxide is removed from the
atmosphere primarily
through photosynthesis and enters the
terrestrial and oceanic biospheres.
Carbon dioxide also dissolves directly
from the atmosphere into bodies of
water (ocean, lakes, etc.).
Fig. Carbon cycle (Riebeek, Holli.,2011)
Atmospheric CO2 Concentration
Atmospheric CO2 concentration measured
at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii from
1958 to 2023 (also called the Keeling
Curve). The rise in CO2 over that time
period is clearly visible. The concentration
is expressed as μmole per mole, or ppm.
CO2 concentrations over the last 800,000
years as measured from ice
cores (blue/green) and directly.
Ocean Acidification
• Carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean to form
carbonic acid (H2CO3), bicarbonate (HCO−3),
and carbonate (CO2−3). There is about fifty times
as much carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans
as exists in the atmosphere. The oceans act as an
enormous carbon sink, and have taken up about a
third of CO2 emitted by human activity.
• Ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in
the pH of the Earth's ocean. Between 1950 and
2020, the average pH of the ocean surface fell
from approximately 8.15 to 8.05.
• Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities
are the primary cause of ocean acidification,
with atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)
levels exceeding 410 ppm (in 2020). CO2 from
the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. This
chemical reaction produces carbonic
acid (H2CO3) which dissociates into
a bicarbonate ion (HCO−3) and a hydrogen
ion (H+). The presence of free hydrogen ions (H+)
lowers the pH of the ocean,
increasing acidity (this does not mean
that seawater is acidic yet; it is still alkaline, with
a pH higher than 8). Marine calcifying organisms,
Fig. : Annual CO2 flows from anthropogenic sources (left) into
such as mollusks and corals, are especially Earth's atmosphere, land, and ocean sinks (right) since the 1960s.
vulnerable because they rely on calcium Units in equivalent gigatonnes carbon per year.
carbonate to build shells and skeletons.
