Climate Change

A change of weather patterns, rainfall intensities, average temperatures and frequency of extremes of temperatures which has been occurring globally over a longer time period. However, the rate of change in these events has been increasing since at least the start of the 21st Century and this is a significant challenge for industries and societies to how best to address this issue.

To comply with the Climate Change Act 2008 the UK Government is required to carry out a five-year assessment of the risks of climate change and in 2022 stated that “Climate change is happening now. It is one of the biggest challenges of our generation and has already begun to cause irreversible damage to our planet and way of life.”
(UK Climate Change Risk Assessment 2022 Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 56 of the Climate Change Act 2008, 17 January 2022, HM Government (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1047003/climate-change-risk-assessment-2022.pdf)

Increasing temperatures, especially during the summer, is a very noticeable effect of climate change and the increase in the average surface temperatures since pre-industrial times is about 1.2°C. This may not seem a significant figure, however, this is an average that reflects cooler, chillier, temperatures at certain times of the year and very hot temperatures at others.
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) on Climate Change 2021 The Physical Science Basis, pp318 & 320 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_FullReport.pdf)

This increase is the result of pollutants, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), which have accumulated in the atmosphere and “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.” (AR6, p4).”
The concentration of CO2 at the start of the industrial revolution (c.1750) was about 278ppm (AR6, p300), and on 9th October 2022 a reading of 414.62ppm of CO2 was recorded at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii (https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu). Regular readings have been taken here since 1958, being originally started by the scientist Charles Keeling when a figure of 315ppm was recorded. The gradual but continual increase, of 100ppm over 64 years, is well illustrated in the following graphic known as the Keeling Curve.