The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently released one of the most comprehensive reports on climate change to date. The NOAA’s report contains more details and more supporting evidence of anthropogenic global warming.
In 2016, the global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.45˚-0.56˚C above the average for 1981 to 2010, a record high, according to the report. The temperature was also higher than 1˚C over the pre-industrial average.
According to the report sea level hit record highs due to “meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets, plus thermal expansion of the ocean water as it warms.”
Every month of 2016 also had at least 12 percent of the global land surface experiencing severe drought conditions and 4 percent experiencing extreme drought; a run this long has not been seen since the post 1950 period. By burning fossil fuels for energy, human activities have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than 40 percent since the Industrial Revolution.
While this a report published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, President Trump does not believe in climate change, once calling it a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.
It does not fare well for the President to not only disregard the most pressing of issues for our generation. According to an article by CNN, the authors of the report are worried they will not have the support of the President.
“We have yet to see any pushback, there’s been no muzzling, but the uncertainty comes from an obvious place,” an author of the report who asked not to be named said.
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