Anthropogenic Factors Influencing Climate Change

Introduction
Climate is a term used to summarise the long term atmospheric elements that cause the short term weather patterns received in a place (“Climate” Britannica 2015). Climate change is the alterations the climate goes through due to a number of factors. These factors can be described as natural or anthropogenic (“Climate Change” Britannica 2015). Natural drivers of climate change are as a result of natural processes such as changes in the solar activity, volcanic activity or the Earth’s orbit. Anthropogenic factors affecting climate change refers to the impact that human activity has on climate change, particularly do to the release of greenhouse gasses and clearing of land leading to less CO2 being absorbed plants such as trees (Ruddiman
Eruptions often release large amounts of sulphate aerosols being released into the atmosphere causing widespread cooling due to the aerosols reflecting back the sun’s energy before it reaches the earth and the effects of this can last for several months or even years (Holden et al. 2012 Ch. 4). Volcanic eruptions also emit large amounts of gases including sulphur, water vapour, and carbon dioxide. Sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere causes the formation of acid droplets that scatter in the atmosphere and cause the sun’s rays to bounce back into space causing the earth to cool down for several months until the droplets fall and the temperature is restored (Holden et al. 2012 Ch. 4). On the other hand carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and will contribute to global warming and the emissions remain in the atmosphere for several hundred years (Holden et al. 2012 Ch. 4). There has been data from previous eruptions to support this idea. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 caused global temperatures to fall between 1991 and 1995 (Met Office
The term ‘Anthropocene’ is used to define the time period in which humans were affecting the earth’s atmosphere. Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) used this term to define the industrial era in which humans were affecting the greenhouse gas concentrations, however Ruddiman (2003) argues that the Anthropocene started thousands of years ago with early agricultural processes and plagues (Ruddiman 2003). Before industrialization there has been evidence to prove that humans had some impact on the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases as there were anomalous values in the concentration levels that didn’t follow the pattern of expected by ‘natural‘ behaviour suggesting that early human activities may have been responsible (Ruddiman 2003). This is as a result of anthropogenic agricultural practices as they involve deforestation and trees and much of the biomass cleared for farming were carbon stores and made up 25% of the world’s carbon stores (Ruddiman 2003) and many of these trees were burnt causing the release of CO2. The draining of wetlands and ploughing of rangelands have also contributed to the increased CO2 in the atmosphere dueto the decomposing of organic carbon(Salinger 2005) The growing of rice and farming of cows also contributes as it releases methane, and as humans