Met Office: What is climate change? 23 November 2020
The Met Office has a very good explanation of what climate change is. This includes evidence from UK and global sources; as well as causes and impacts, and statistics on extreme events.
IPCC – Fifth assessment report (AR5) 1 October 2013
The IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5) was released on the 30 September 2013. There have been improvements in the science since the last report, with 6 years of more data to analyse and more powerful climate models. It is the same story of global warming. Notably: there has been an increase in confidence that human activities are the principal cause; air temperatures a rising more slowly; but sea levels are rising faster than in the previous report.
An inconvenient truth 1 January 2010
I would strongly advise you to watch the documentary film “An inconvenient truth” to get a good understanding of the issue. Whether you know a lot about climate change or you are not sure what it is all about, this film is outstanding. And I can see why Al Gore has been given a Nobel Peace Prize for it. The web address is www.climatecrisis.net: buy it or borrow it from a library – and pass it around your friends.
IPCC – Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)
The core group of people that are looking into the climate change problem are the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). You can see their latest findings at the IPCC website. Their Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was published in 2007. This is the consensus of all of the world’s leading climate scientists. Its findings are quite worrying, especially how much change has accelerated more than they predicted in the previous report. However, they do make clear that we can make a difference (i.e. mitigate the problem) if we act now. There is a lot of information on their website, you will probably want to start by reading the Summary for Policymakers documents in AR4, starting with “The Physical Science Basis”.