Why Manipal Needs to Act upon Climate Change
Dr. Anish Warrier, Coordinator and Dr. Dhanasree Jayaram, Co-Coordinator (Centre for Climate Studies, Manipal Academy of Higher Education) Climate change has emerged as a defining global and national problem, the response to which needs to be supported and informed by scientific knowledge. For the past 4.7 billion years, our planet Earth has seen large-scale climatic variations on different timescales, which has led to mass extinction of different flora and fauna. There have been several external and internal forcing(s) like incoming solar radiation and volcanic eruptions, which play an important role in these fluctuations. However, during the past few decades, there has been an upward trend in the average global temperature, which has caused widespread changes in the global climate system. This exponential rise in the global temperature is mainly attributed to anthropogenic activities and has several disastrous effects on our environment. Realizing the threat posed by climate chan