Objective
Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, such as through variations in the solar cycle. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.
Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.
Examples of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building,
for example.
- Clearing land and forests can also release carbon dioxide.
- Landfills for garbage are a major source of methane emissions.
- Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main emitters.
Causes of Climate Change
Since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have released large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which has changed the earth’s climate. Natural processes, such as changes in the sun's energy and volcanic eruptions, also affect the earth's climate.
Human activities have contributed substantially to climate change through:
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Reflectivity or Absorption of the Sun’s Energy
Greenhouse Gases
Concentrations of the key greenhouse gases have all increased since the Industrial Revolution due to human activities. Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide concentrations are now more abundant in the earth’s atmosphere than any time in the last 800,000 years. 5 These greenhouse gas emissions have increased the greenhouse effect and caused the earth’s surface temperature to rise. Burning fossil fuels changes the climate more than any other human activity.
Carbon dioxide
Human activities currently release over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.6 Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by more than 40 percent since pre-industrial times, from approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) in the 18th century7 to 414 ppm in 2020.8
Methane
Human activities increased methane concentrations during most of the 20th century to more than 2.5 times the pre-industrial level, from approximately 722 parts per billion (ppb) in the 18th century9 to 1,867 ppb in 2019.10
Nitrous oxide
Nitrous oxide concentrations have risen approximately 20 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution, with a relatively rapid increase toward the end of the 20th century. Nitrous oxide concentrations have increased from a pre-industrial level of 270 ppb11 to 332 ppb in 2019.12
Effects of Climate change
Hotter temperatures
As greenhouse gas concentrations rise, so does the global surface temperature. The last decade, 2011-2020, is the warmest on record. Since the 1980s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one. Nearly all land areas are seeing more hot days and heat waves. Higher temperatures increase heat-related illnesses and make working outdoors more difficult. Wildfires start more easily and spread more rapidly when conditions are hotter. Temperatures in the Arctic have warmed at least twice as fast as the global average.
More severe storms
Destructive storms have become more intense and more frequent in many regions. As temperatures rise, more moisture evaporates, which exacerbates extreme rainfall and flooding, causing more destructive storms. The frequency and extent of tropical storms is also affected by the warming ocean. Cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons feed on warm waters at the ocean surface. Such storms often destroy homes and communities, causing deaths and huge economic losses.
Increased drought
Climate change is changing water availability, making it scarcer in more regions. Global warming exacerbates water shortages in already water-stressed regions and is leading to an increased risk of agricultural droughts affecting crops, and ecological droughts increasing the vulnerability of ecosystems. Droughts can also stir destructive sand and dust storms that can move billions of tons of sand across continents. Deserts are expanding, reducing land for growing food. Many people now face the threat of not having enough water on a regular basis.
A warming, rising ocean
The ocean soaks up most of the heat from global warming. The rate at which the ocean is warming strongly increased over the past two decades, across all depths of the ocean. As the ocean warms, its volume increases since water expands as it gets warmer. Melting ice sheets also cause sea levels to rise, threatening coastal and island communities. In addition, the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide, keeping it from the atmosphere. But more carbon dioxide makes the ocean more acidic, which endangers marine life and coral reefs.
Loss of species
Climate change poses risks to the survival of species on land and in the ocean. These risks increase as temperatures climb. Exacerbated by climate change, the world is losing species at a rate 1,000 times greater than at any other time in recorded human history. One million species are at risk of becoming extinct within the next few decades. Forest fires, extreme weather, and invasive pests and diseases are among many threats related to climate change. Some species will be able to relocate and survive, but others will not.
Not enough food
Changes in the climate and increases in extreme weather events are among the reasons behind a global rise in hunger and poor nutrition. Fisheries, crops, and livestock may be destroyed or become less productive. With the ocean becoming more acidic, marine resources that feed billions of people are at risk. Changes in snow and ice cover in many Arctic regions have disrupted food supplies from herding, hunting, and fishing. Heat stress can diminish water and grasslands for grazing, causing declining crop yields and affecting livestock.
More health risks
Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. Climate impacts are already harming health, through air pollution, disease, extreme weather events, forced displacement, pressures on mental health, and increased hunger and poor nutrition in places where people cannot grow or find sufficient food. Every year, environmental factors take the lives of around 13 million people. Changing weather patterns are expanding diseases, and extreme weather events increase deaths and make it difficult for health care systems to keep up.
Poverty and displacement
Climate change increases the factors that put and keep people in poverty. Floods may sweep away urban slums, destroying homes and livelihoods. Heat can make it difficult to work in outdoor jobs. Water scarcity may affect crops. Over the past decade (2010–2019), weather-related events displaced an estimated 23.1 million people on average each year, leaving many more vulnerable to poverty. Most refugees come from countries that are most vulnerable and least ready to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Combat for climate change
Climate change is the greatest environmental challenge the world has ever faced, but we can do something about it. We are the last generation that can stop devastating climate change. We have the knowledge and the tools . Its everyone responsibility to save the mother earth for future generations.
What it does
Our Motto is "Climate Action" which is one of the UN sustainable goal to combat for climate change. We had done Analysis/visualization from the root level across countries all over the world. We had done deep analysis of Carbon footprints/emissions, Green house gases effect( like, N2O, CH4, F-Gases ) from the year 1960 - 2020. Not only that we found the reasons of emission of these gases in each and every country and as well as solutions to tackle the fight for the climate change. For easier and better control of the data, we had plotted country wise and year wise about the emissions and reasons for increase, as well as solutions in the google map. It will very easy and flexible UI to check the statistics of the emissions.
How we built it
We had built user friendly and convenient flexible UI to check the statistics of the emissions across the world or in every country. We had divided the statistics in to three categories(colors) while plotting the data in the map.
Highest Emissions(CO2,N2O,CH4)of country and year wise in blue color markers. Lowest Emissions(CO2,N2O,CH4)of country and year wise in green color markers. Rest(If there is no data) will be displayed in orange color markers.
Datasets
- CO2 Emissions (kt) | World Bank Open Data from AWS Marketplace
- Green house gases (kt) | historical emissions from Climate Watch
AWS Cloud Service for Machine Learning (Amazon SageMaker Studio - Jupyter Notebook Instances) :
Amazon SageMaker is a fully managed machine learning service. With SageMaker, the developers can quickly and easily build and train machine learning models, and then directly deploy them into a production-ready hosted environment. It provides an integrated Jupyter authoring notebook instance for easy access to your data sources for exploration and analysis. It also provides common machine learning algorithms that are optimized to run efficiently against extremely large data in a distributed environment.
Challenges we ran into
The major challenge was collecting datasets of different green house gasses for different years and different countries with reasons and as well as solutions to fight for the climate change.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
So, we really do feel proud that we were able to pull it off. Getting familiar with great AWS Services(AWS Cloud services, Amazon Sage maker studio, AWS Data Exchange), collecting information, and altogether making things work good. We're really proud of that.
What we learned
It is apt to say that the process, alone, of building a project, whatever it is, holds new knowledge and skills to achieve. We did a lot of that: unlocking new knowledge and skills. This includes:
- AWS Cloud Services
- AWS Data Exchange
- Amazon Sage maker studio
What's next for Carbon Footprints/Green houses gases effect Analyzer
The is only in like v0.0.1. There is so much left to do. We are going to collect the data for each and every state, city of each and every country all over the world, we would like to do deeper analysis, its reasons of climate change and also will come back with solutions. We are planning to build User friendly Analysis tool to know the statistics of country/State/City. As a citizen, we want to play our role for achieving Sustainable UN goal "Climate Action" to save environment for future generations. All these things and more will go into improving the app.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.