Climate Change
From Open Risk Manual
Contents
Definition
Climate Change in the context of Risk Management and Sustainable Finance refers to secular or abrupt changes in environmental conditions (e.g. temperature changes, sea-level changes, wind or precipitation phenomena) that form fundamental risk factors or underlying causes that may generate more specific Climate-Related Risk.
The change of Climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods [1]
Current evidence is that overall weather patterns are changing on a global scale for the long-term due to human contributions to Green House Gas Emissions.
Indicators
- Increased humidity in the atmosphere
- Increased evaporation of ocean and fresh water and moisture from soils
- Increasing frequency and intensity of storms and unusual weather patterns
- Melting glaciers
- Melting permafrost and release of methane to the atmosphere
- Decreasing snow cover in winter
- Temperature increases over land and sea
- Temperature increases in boreholes
- Increase in ocean heat content
- Increasing air temperatures in the lower atmosphere (troposphere)
- Increasing temperature of the upper crust of the solid Earth
- Cooling of the stratosphere
- Plants and animals shifting to higher latitudes and altitudes
- Sea level rising
- Ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice melting
