What can cause climate change?

Answer 1

Some causes for climate change would be mostly due to human activity. After cars and factories were made this has caused lots of pollution. many green house gases have been let out into our atmosphere. green house gases are gases that get trapped in earth's atmosphere that help maintain earth's temperature. Although if there are too much green house gases in our atmosphere such as carbon dioxide, earth's temperature will begin to rise. this process is called global warming.

Answer 2

Global warming is the only cause of the present climate change.

The main cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) in industry, transport and the generation of electricity. This releases carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases. Extra greenhouse gases capture extra heat, warming the planet.

Answer 3

Climate change can be caused by many things. It's not only nature that changes climate, we too change the climate, our actions changes the whole world so much. These changes are sometimes bad. Our factories cause lots of smoke thus making a hole in the Ozone Layer, when the ozone layer is damaged we will experience more global warming.

Answer:

The ozone layer has no effect on global climate. It does have some effect on the animals that are under the thinning areas of each pole during their winter months, but has no effect on actual weather.

Climate change has been occurring since the beginning of the planet. Currently the planet has been in a warming trend for about 10,200 years. This is caused by know planetary alignments. We see cycles of warming and cooling of the planet that appear to be around 100 thousand years in total cycle times. Warming of the Northern Hemisphere is currently being caused by all major planets being on the same side of our solar system at once. This causes the planet to spin in a very non circular orbit. The effect is referred to as the Milankovich effect, named after the individual that discovered this issue in the early 1900's. In approximately 50K years, the planets will be at maximum dispersion and our orbit the most circular. This will cause lower temps then "normal".

There is also an issue with water flow patterns, wind patterns, and other external variables (solar flares etc.) These all cause variations in our weather and eventually our climate.

Man may also have some contributory effect. The current political belief is that the use of fossil fuels has some effect on the weather (and therefore long term the climate). This is a hotly debated topic despite some political figures claiming the debate to be over. It is know that man contributes about 0.28% of all the annual greenhouse gases emitted into our atmosphere. These gases are what allows the planet to be habitable and retains warmth. It is possible that a portion of the 0.2 to 0.6 degrees of warming the planet has seen since the low portion of the last mini ice age (1850) is attributable to man. This is still an unproven theory and is hotly debated.

Answer 4

There are natural causes, such as Milankovitch Cycles. These are orbital cycles which combine polar inclination with precession to cause sufficient variation in insolation (solar heat) to alter the climate. The last few dozen ice ages correlate very closely with these orbital cycles.

In geologic ages past climate change as a result of (or in concert with) other factors. Prolonged periods of cooling occurred as atmospheric carbon was sequestered in various ways. The Permian period, 300 million years ago, resulted in teratons of carbon pulled from the atmosphere by swamp plants and tropical forests. When these died, instead of decaying and liberating their carbon they simply sat and were ultimately buried, forming much of the coal and oil we use today. This did not happen all at once, but over a period of millions of years.

The Cretaceous is notable for calcareous coccolithophores, which are algae, protists, and phytoplankton, dying and gradually sinking to the sea floor. Over millions of years the buildup of calcium and carbon in their bodies formed enormous chalk deposits, from which the Cretaceous gets its name. This too pulled gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere, altering earth's climate over vast periods of time.

More recently, 15 million years after the close of the Cretaceous, an aquatic fern called azolla proliferated over the ocean surface. When it died it sank into the deep water, sequestering atmospheric carbon along with it. Over a period of just a few hundred thousand years this fern pulled so much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere it precipitated the subsequent series of ice ages.

The current cause for climate change also involves carbon. Human beings, busy as little beavers, have been digging up carbon buried for hundreds of millions of years and burning it. This activity has increased atmospheric carbon dioxide content from 280 parts per million just a couple hundred years ago to nearly 400 parts per million today. Before 2050 we will pass 500 parts per million, and will have doubled atmospheric CO2 before 2100, at the current rate of consumption. This is radically rapid change, from any geologic perspective.

Answer 5

The cause of climate change is global warming.

It is the rising temperatures of the atmosphere and the oceans that are causing the changes in our climate.

See the related question What causes global warming?

Answer 6

rain wind dry weather