Climate Facts: Carbon dioxide from human activities increasing 250 times faster since last ice age

The complexities of climate change and its associated jargon can make it difficult to digest. TheCable’s climate quick facts will help to demystify these climate concepts through easy-to-understand and straight-to-the-point explanations.

Here are some to keep at the tip of your fingers:

• The United Nations warns that the more the world warms, the greater the changes in the climate system become. This, the UN said includes more frequent and intense hot extremes, marine heatwaves, heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.
• It added that continued warming will further intensify the global water cycle, making it more variable, and changing monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events.
• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.
• The organisation said there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods in the last 800,000 years, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago.
• Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last ice age, according to NASA.