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What is global warming?
Well, you might just say global warming is only a rise in the planet's air temperatures and that's it, but it is not simply a matter of temperatures rising and things becoming warmer.
It is said that when air temperatures rise the following phenomena may occur.
- We will no longer be able to grow the crops we now grow, and famine will result.
- The earth's wind patterns will change, bringing about floods and droughts in various regions.
- Melting of ice at the poles will cause sea levels to rise and places where people live will become submerged.
- Conversely, cooling of the stratosphere (altitude from about 10km to 50km) will occur, and the presence of a special type of cloud will increase in the stratosphere above the north and south poles, extending the scale of the ozone hole.
And the worrying thing about this problem is that once its impact on humankind has become visible, it will be too late to change it.
The scale of these phenomena has also been predicted, and a scientists' report presented to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proposed the opinion that "considering the complexity of the global weather system, a one degree rise in temperature may trigger other factors that also promote warming, meaning that the predicted changes are probably a low-end limit".
Another cause of concern is that the predicted scale is only what has been estimated in the context of humankind's experience, and there is the possibility that unknown mechanisms could lead to much worse situations, as was made clear by the example of the ozone hole.