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Air pollution can cause diseases, allergies, and even death; it can also cause harm to animals and crops and damage the natural environment (for example, climate change, ozone depletion or habitat degradation) or built environment (for example, acid rain). [3] Air pollution can occur naturally or be caused by human activities. [4]
Some climate change effects: wildfire caused by heat and dryness, bleached coral caused by ocean acidification and heating, environmental migration caused by desertification, and coastal flooding caused by storms and sea level rise. Effects of climate change are well documented and growing for Earth's natural environment and human societies. Changes to the climate system include an overall ...
The scientific community has been investigating the causes of climate change for decades. After thousands of studies, the scientific consensus is that it is "unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land since pre-industrial times."
Various definitions of pollution exist, which may or may not recognize certain types, such as noise pollution or greenhouse gases.The United States Environmental Protection Administration defines pollution as "Any substances in water, soil, or air that degrade the natural quality of the environment, offend the senses of sight, taste, or smell, or cause a health hazard.
Climate change can also be used more broadly to include changes to the climate that have happened throughout Earth's history. [32] Global warming—used as early as 1975 [33] —became the more popular term after NASA climate scientist James Hansen used it in his 1988 testimony in the U.S. Senate. [34] Since the 2000s, climate change has ...
Absorption cross sections for CO2 (green) and water vapour (purple). The wavelengths most relevant to climate change are those where the green plot crosses the upper horizontal line, representing a CO2 level somewhat larger than the current concentration. CO 2 absorbs the ground's thermal radiation mainly at wavelengths between 13 and 17 micron ...
Hazards have the potential to cause adverse effects only if they come into contact with populations that may be harmed. For this reason, hazard identification includes the development of a conceptual model of exposure. [8] Conceptual models communicate the pathway connecting sources of a given hazard to the potentially exposed population(s).
The greenhouse effect on Earth is defined as: "The infrared radiative effect of all infrared absorbing constituents in the atmosphere.Greenhouse gases (GHGs), clouds, and some aerosols absorb terrestrial radiation emitted by the Earth's surface and elsewhere in the atmosphere."