Summary
Scientists study the effects of climate change by using data from weather stations, satellites, and other sources to create models that help them understand how the climate is changing.
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They also use the scientific method to explore our natural world and understand climate change.
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Additionally, they use records from physical, chemical, and biological materials preserved within the geologic record to understand climate change from before the past 100-150 years.
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They also use attribution science to determine the cause of a particular event or trend in the climate.
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According to
Summary
• The scientific method is the process that scientists use to explore our natural world and understand climate change
• The scientific method is iterative, meaning that climate scientists are constantly making new discoveries about the world based on the building blocks of scientific knowledge
• The scientific method is a way of going from observations to answers.
The scientific method and climate change: How scientists know
nasa.gov
Summary
• Scientists use a variety of methods to study the effects of climate change, including observations from modern instruments, records from physical, chemical, and biological materials, and proxies from ice cores, tree rings, and sediment cores.
• The study of climate change from before the past 100-150 years is done using records from physical, chemical, and biological materials preserved within the geologic record.
What kinds of data do scientists use to study climate?
nasa.gov
Summary
• Scientists study the effects of climate change by using data from weather stations, satellites, and other sources.
• They use this data to create models that help them understand how the climate is changing.
• These models help scientists predict how the climate will change in the future.
How do scientists measure climate change? - Museum of Applied Arts and ...
maas.museum
Summary
• The Earth's climate has changed many times in the past, and it is changing faster now than it has in the past.
• Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap the Sun's heat, and this is one reason Earth is getting warmer.
• Too many greenhouse gases can cause too much warming, and this is why we need to monitor CO 2 levels.
• Several NASA missions have instruments that study CO 2 in the atmosphere.
• Over millions of years, Earth's climate has warmed up and cooled down many times.
• Global air temperatures near Earth's surface have gone up about 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century.
• A couple of degrees may not seem like much, but this change can have big impacts on the health of Earth's plants and animals.
• We know what Earth's past climate was like by studying things that have been around for a long time, like trees.
• But if scientists want to know what Earth's climate was like hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago, they study sediment cores and ice cores.
• Sediment cores come from the bottoms of lakes or the ocean floor, and ice cores are drilled from deep — sometimes miles — below the surface of the ice in places like Antarctica
How Do We Know the Climate Is Changing? | NASA Climate Kids
nasa.gov
Summary
• Attribution science is the process of determining the cause of a particular event or trend in the climate.
• After the European summer heatwave of 2003, attribution science became a critical field for understanding climate change.
• Attribution science relies on evidence from studying climate fluctuations over “deep time,” before humans began industrial scale burning of fossil fuels.
How do climate scientists study the causes of climate change?
thehill.com
Summary
• Climate models are used to predict how the climate will change in the future.
• The physics of climate modeling is similar to weather forecasting, but the questions are different.
• To account for the variability of future emissions, scientists run climate models with different emission scenarios.
How Do We Predict Climate Change? - Caltech Science Exchange
caltech.edu
Summary
• Climate change is the long-term alteration in Earth’s climate and weather patterns.
• It took nearly a century of research and data to convince the vast majority of the scientific community that human activity could alter the climate of our entire planet.
• In the 1800s, experiments suggesting that human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases could collect in the atmosphere and insulate Earth were met with more curiosity than concern.
• By the late 1950s, CO2 readings would offer some of the first data to corroborate the global warming theory.
• Eventually an abundance of data, along with climate modeling and real-world weather events would show not only that global warming was real, but that it also presented a host of catastrophic consequences.
• Dating back to the ancient Greeks, many people had proposed that humans could change temperatures and influence rainfall by chopping down trees, plowing fields or irrigating a desert.
• One theory of climate effects, widely believed until the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, held that “rain follows the plow,” the now-discredited idea that tilling soil and other agricultural practices would result in increased rainfall.
• Accurate
Climate Change History - HISTORY
history.com
