Global Warming – Our Greatest Challenge

Abstract

The current state of Earth’s climate is the result of a long-lasting, continuous development: it is a snapshot from a film of the Earth’s history that has lasted around 4.5 billion years and is still running. Climate fluctuations are documented by geological findings (marine sediment cores: several million years; ice cores: 800,000 years), by tree rings (10,000 years), historical records (1000 years) and by modern instruments (e.g. thermometers and barometers, 250 years). These data reveal pronounced changes as a characteristic feature of Earth’s climate, which extend over time scales ranging from months to millions of years. In recent decades, climate scientists have analysed many of these data sets and developed dynamic models that have been successfully tested against modern observations and are used to project the future of our climate. Data analysis and climate modelling show that a pronounced impact of human activities on current climate change is apparent.