Climate Change Awareness in Asia: An Assessment of the Climate Asia Blog

Climate change refers to a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns in terms of change in average weather conditions or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. Global warming, which refers to the rise in the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century, is one of the most visible impacts of climate change. Since the early 20th century, Earth’s mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), with about two-thirds of the increase occurring since 1980. Scientists are more than 90% certain that this warming of the climate system is primarily caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Climate model projections summarized in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicated that during the 21st century, the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 2.9 °C (2 to 5.2 °F) for their lowest emissions scenario and 2.4 to 6.4 °C (4.3 to 11.5 °F) for their highest