Climate Change is Real! Thx
A Website by Prat Kapur, Hannah Slocumb, Siena Guerrero
In 1984 scientists discovered a hole in the ozone over Antarctica. It was figured out that chlorinated fluorocarbons (CFCs), which are extremely stable in the troposphere, make their way into the stratosphere. There chlorine atoms are split by photons into chlorine radicals, or chlorine atoms with one unpaired electron, which undergo reactions with ozone to make diatomic and monoatomic oxygen. CFCs have been historically used as refrigerants and components of aerosols, due to their inert and cooling properties. International efforts have helped in reducing the amount of CFCs being used, and in 2016 the ozone hole had returned to "moderate" size. The first graph illustrates the size of the ozone hole since 1979. The second graph shows the proportional relationship between CFC-12 concentration and ozone hole size.
Here is the plot of the surface temperature of Chile since the 1700s. We have the x-axis as the year, and each dot represents a different data point for the months of June and/or July of that year, each year can have 0-2 points (depending on the data for that year containing June or July data points).
One large contributor to climate change is the greenhouse gas Carbon dioxide (CO2), a type of heat-trapping gas that is created largely due to the burning of fossil fuels. Scientists soon discovered that this large addition of CO2 from human activities into the atmosphere has contributed greatly to global warming, and as a result several countries have banded together in order to reduce their CO2 emissions. For many developing and underdeveloped countries, however, CO2 emissions have actually increased. In many South American countries, like Chile, CO2 emissions gone up as oil becomes cheaper and easier to consume.
In the below graph, we can see that Chile’s CO2 emissions have gone through several periods of increasing and decreasing CO2 emissions, but ultimately Chile’s CO2 emissions have remained quite high. In order to combat climate change, the entire earth needs to change their consumption habits otherwise a few high emission countries can undo the benefits of a few low emission countries.