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Contemporary climate change involves rising global temperatures and significant shifts in Earth's weather patterns. Climate change is driven by emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Emissions come mostly from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), and also from agriculture, forest loss, cement production and steel making. Climate change causes sea level rise, glacial retreat and desertification, and intensifies heat waves, wildfires and tropical cyclones. These effects of climate change endanger food security, freshwater access and global health. Climate change can be limited by using low-carbon energy sources such as wind and solar energy, by forestation, and shifts in agriculture. Adaptations such as coastline protection cannot by themselves avert the risk of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts. Limiting global warming in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement requires reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. This animation, produced by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio with data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, shows global surface temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2023 on a world map, illustrating the rise in global temperatures. Normal temperatures (calculated over the 30-year baseline period 1951–1980) are shown in white, higher-than-normal temperatures in red, and lower-than-normal temperatures in blue. The data are averaged over a running 24-month window. Video credit: NASA; visualized by Mark SubbaRao
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