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Global warming has been a hot subject in today’s environmental issues because of its effect on the climate, which drastically changed in the past years. Hot summers become hotter and cold winter has not been cooler. Global warming occurs when there is an average increase in the Earth’s temperature. Studies show that the earth is getting warmer by 1 degrees farenheit over the last 100 years. The climate and health effects of global warming in general has caused the subject to be an interesting study nowadays.

A government panel called Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its fourth assessment report on the climate change in 2007. This organization was estbalished by United Nations Environmental Programme and UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) since 1988. The panel is composed of members of the UN and WMO.

The fourth assessment report in 2007 showed that the the earth has indeed warmed since the 20th century and that this observation is unequivocal. It also concluded that the average increase in temprature was due to the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere which keeps the earth’s surface warmer. Other observations include the earth atmospheric composition, the earth’s average temperature, conditions of the ocean and other changes in the climate.

Based on the report, one of the indications that the earth has warmed is that there was lesser cold night and winters. In fact, the years between 1995 and 2006 was the warmest year. An average temperature of 0.74 degrees Celsius has caused this warming effect and that a metropolitan area or what we call the urban heat island has not been counted to these effects. It has also been observed that 80% of the heat has been absorbed by the ocean which cause the change in the climate system. Furthermore, snow and glaciers in the north and south hemisphere have decreased in volume as well as the ice sheets in the arctic. This causes the rise on the sea level by about 3.1mm yearly since 1993 to 2003. However, anartic sea ice has not increase its sea level since there was no observed warming in that area. There was also increase in hurricane activities especially in North Atlantic although there was no specifications on how many hurricanes are expected but this increase is related to the rise in the temperature of the sea surface.

The observations from this report is somewhat subject to criticism due to some political issues.There are also scientific and non scientific arguments that can be derived from this. However, these are panels composed of scientists and authors that agree on issues related to climate change and has been a reliable source of review.