What is global warming?« Back to Questions List

Global warming refers to the rise in the temperature of our planet. The rise in temperature has the potential to change rainfall and snow patterns, increase droughts and severe storms, reduce lake ice cover, melt glaciers, increase sea levels, and change plant and animal behavior. Man-made causes do the maximum damage to our planet. Everyday knowingly and unknowingly, we pollute our environment by riding in a car, using an air conditioner, cutting trees for want of space or wood products and many more activities. All these activities contribute to addition of more and more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere.

With too many greenhouse gases in the air, the earth’s atmosphere will trap too much heat. If all heat reflected from earth would be trapped by green-house gases and nothing would escape, this would lead to increase in global temperature. This is known as Global Warming. Over the last century, global average temperature has increased by more than 1°F (0.7°C)

 As a result of global warming, earth would get too hot for us, animals and plants to survive. The other consequences of global warming are rise in sea level, melting of ice in arctic, Antarctic circles, floods and famine etc. If the pace of global warming doesn’t abate, we cannot pass on a healthy environment to our future generation.

In order to save our planet and her resources, actions are taken at regional and national levels like improving energy efficiency of electronic gadgets, greening transportation, managing forests and agriculture, deploying new technologies that make us less reliable on fossil fuels etc. At individual level, we all must contribute by learning more and sharing our knowledge on global warming, saying ‘No’ to products made from exotic woods and animals, avoiding meat diet and planting more and more trees.