Africa Knowledge Management Portal
Informing health decisions and actions
Climate Change and Human Health
Health Risk Environment
Environmental Health and Sanitation
Description
There is international scientific agreement that the world is getting warmer. By examining climate records, scientists have determined that the temperature of the air at the Earth��s surface has warmed by approximately 0.6�C since the late 19th century (see Figure 1-1). Evidence from tree rings, tropical corals and Greenlandice cores indicates that, at least for the Northern Hemisphere, the 20thcentury was the warmest of the past 1,000 years, with the 1990s being the warmest decade of the millennium. Furthermore, it��s getting ever warmer �� most experts agree that average global temperatures will rise by 1.4�C to 5.8�C over the next century.