Global Warming is defined as the increase of the average temperature on Earth.

As the Earth is getting hotter it is thought that natural disasters such as hurricanes, droughts and floods will become more frequent.

Over the last 100 years, the average temperature of the air near the Earth´s surface has risen a little less than 1° Celsius (0.74 ± 0.18°C, or 1.3 ± 0.32° Fahrenheit).

Doesn't seem all that much does it?

However, climate scientists who have been part of developing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) report into climate change and global warming suggest that increases in the levels of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases from human activities may be responsible for an increased number of storms, floods and forest fires.

NB: These other gases include nitrous oxide, water vapour, methane, CFC's and ozone and are known as CO_2e, and measured against the impact of CO₂ to provide an equivalence to carbon dioxide.

Their data indicates that an increase of one degree Celsius makes the Earth warmer now than it has been for at least a thousand years. Out of the 20 warmest years on record, 19 have occurred since 1980.

But it is not only about how much the Earth is warming. It is also about how fast it is warming.

There have always been natural climate changes such as Ice Ages and the warm intermediate times between them, but those evolved over periods of 50,000 to 100,000 years.

A temperature rise (and the increase in CO_2e gases in the atmosphere) as fast as has been measured over the last 30 years has never happened before, as far as scientists can ascertain from historical and geophysical records.

Moreover, according to natural effects like solar cycles and volcano activity, scientific opinion had previously predicted that the Earth would begin to cool rather than warm.

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