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Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are now more than a third higher than they were in pre-industrial times.

Scientists have compared recent rises in temperature and levels of greenhouse gases with historic data based on ice samples and tree rings. On a graph this data produces a ‘hockey stick’-shaped curve depicting a rapid increase in temperature from 1900 onwards. Levels of carbon dioxide are now rising faster than at any time in the past 20,000 years.

In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that human activities are very likely to have been responsible for most of the global warming in the past 50 years. And because some greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for many years, current emissions will go on warming the Earth for centuries.

Rising levels of greenhouse gases – ‘the hockey stick’ curves