Climate Change and its Drivers

Despite its huge complexity Climate Change components can be broken down in to smaller constituent parts and more readily understood

File:Componentsofclimatechange.jpg

The climate system is often considered to consist of five main sections:

• the atmosphere
• the hydrosphere – oceans, rivers and lakes
• the cryosphere – snow and ice cover
• the biosphere – the global sum of all living things
• the geosphere – rock, soil and the land surface

Trees and other plants use carbon dioxide to live and grow. Hence they are important in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, that is, they form a carbon sink. When areas of forest are removed (`deforestation'), this carbon sink is removed and amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide will remain higher than they otherwise would have been

References

File:Componentsoftheclimatesystem.pdf