Dominant Drivers Of Climate Change

Climate change refers to the long-term change in the earth’s climate due to the increasing average global temperature which is so-called global warming. It is estimated that climate change results in 600000 deaths worldwide every year, 95% of them occurs in the developing countries ( Conserve-Energy-Future, 2013). As catastrophic impact has been substantially created due to climate change, determining the leading causes to this phenomenon becomes a burning issue globally. Although some people suppose natural factors are to blame for negative alterations to the climate, I hold a strong belief that anthropogenic activities through industrialization and agriculture development are the dominant drivers of climate change.

First and most importantly,

It is widely recognized that variations in solar radiation and activities, such as solar flares or sunspots, if large enough, could have influence on the global temperature. However, since 1750, the average amount of energy coming from the sun either remained constant or increased slightly (Judith, 2010); ergo, the solar irradiance cannot be considered to the primary source of energy that drives our climate system. It should be noted that the lowest layer of the atmosphere is called troposphere meanwhile the higher one is stratosphere. Additionally, the boundary (tropopause) between the troposphere and stratosphere has shift upward in recent year and the probable cause of the rise in tropopause height is from heat-trapping gases accumulating in and heating up the troposphere and conversely blocking heat from getting into the stratosphere, thus cooling the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) and warming the surface and the lower parts of the atmosphere (troposphere). This would not occur if the sun was the sole climate driver, as solar changes would have warmed both the stratosphere and troposphere. For this reason, it is the overloaded amount of human made GHGs that has trapped heat in the lower atmosphere. In brief, although solar variability has played a role in past climate changes, they have been exacerbated by human activities which have led to an massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions that are the dominant factor altering the global