Recent Climate Change - Temperature Changes | Science | Climate Change | U.S. EPA - 0 views
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The IPCC has concluded that most of the observed warming in global average surface temperature that has occurred since the mid-20th century is very likely a result of human activities (IPCC, 2007). During the first half of the last century, there was likely less human impact on the observed warming, and natural variations, such as changes in the amount of radiation received from the sun, likely played a more significant role.
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There is no discrepancy in the rate of global average temperature increase for the surface compared with higher levels in the atmosphere. This discrepancy had previously been used to challenge the validity of climate models used to detect and attribute the causes of observed climate change.
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Errors identified in the satellite data and other temperature observations have been corrected. These and other analyses have increased confidence in the understanding of observed climate changes and their causes.
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Research to detect climate change and attribute its causes using patterns of observed temperature change shows clear evidence of human influences on the climate system due to changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols and stratospheric ozone. An unresolved issue is related to the rates of warming in the tropics. Here, models and theory predict greater warming higher in the atmosphere than at the surface. However, greater warming higher in the atmosphere is not evident in three of the five observational data sets used in the report. Whether this is a result of uncertainties in the observed data, flaws in climate models, or a combination of these is not yet known.