Photograph of sea ice on the Ross Sea, Antarctica.

Additional Resources

Chapter Contents

Evidence for and Causes of Recent Climate Change

  1. Evidence for Recent Climate Change
  2. Causes of Recent Climate Change
  3. Additional Resources

Image above: Ice floating on the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Photograph by John B. Weller (Flickr; public domain).

Climate Data

NASA Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Information, maps, plots, visualizations, and other multimedia on global climate change from NASA. A time-series map animation showing the five-year average variation of global surface temperatures from 1884 to 2019 is available here.

NOAA State of the Climate: Monthly summaries and reports, including news about when new records are set).

Climate Indicators

The Keeling Curve (Scripps Institution of Oceanography): Time-series plots of atmospheric CO2 measurements, from Mauna Loa and ice core data, on time scales varying from the current week to 800,000 years ago to present.

NOAA Tides & Currents: Interactive map of global sea level trends, showing variation in regional sea level changes.

Climate Change Indicators in the United States: data on more than 50 indicators that show the causes and effects of climate change, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Fourth National Climate Assessment

Ways of Measuring Climate Indicators

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Ocean Temperature: Information about remote sensing of surface temperature from satellites.

NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry: Information about satellite altimeters and how they are used to measure sea level.

Reading Between the Tides by Amy Dusto (2014): An article about the history of measuring sea level and the evolution of tide gauges.

Causes of Climate Change

What's Really Warming the World? by Eric Roston and Blacki Migliozzi (2015). An interactive infographic on potential causes of climate change from 1880-2005 and their effects, based on datasets from NASA.

Other Visualizations and Teaching Resources

The Paleontological Research Institution's Teach Climate Change page on the Climate section of Earth@Home has activities on climate science as well as on solutions.

Climate Central: Interactive, maps, graphics, videos, publications, and more on climate change.

Carbon Visuals: Innovative visualizations of greenhouse gas emissions and other topics.

CLEAN (Climate Literacy & Energy Awareness Network): Reviewed collection of teaching resources.