National Geographic has this awesome graphic showing changes to world temperatures over the last 30 years. Everyone has heard about climate change and the fact that the Earth is warming. However, most people don’t realise just how complex the climate is, and that these changes are in no way uniform.
So many factors are involved and there are so many feedback loops that climate change is actually extremely complex and unpredictable. For instance, as you can see below, some parts of the world are cooling, some are warming.
The map below shows how these changes have also caused
unpredictable changes in rainfall. Some area’s are getting drier
(apparently Cape Town included although I wouldn’t have guesssed!) and
others wetter.
I should note here that because of normal variations and measuring details even these results could be misleading. Climate change is very complex, but the balance of evidence says:
- Climate is changing for the warmer
- We are driving this change