NO EXIT: Ecological Limits and Climate Change

Although it is impossible to prove the link between climate change and ecological structures, because of non-climatic effects influence local, short-term biological changes, the earth average temperature has increased by 0.5° Celsius in the last 100 years.
This change had an affect on over 1700 species, moved the poles an average of 6.1 km per decade and moved spring 2.3 days forward in the last decade. The structure and functioning of ecosystems are in danger and it is highly possible that climate change has already affected living systems.

Therefore: What does alter the earth’s climate?

“Any factor which alters the radiation received from the sun or lost to space, or which alters the redistribution of energy within the atmosphere, and between the atmosphere, land and ocean, can affect climate.”
By the increase of greenhouse gases the ability of the earth to cool itself is reduced. Therefore the temperature on earth increases. This is the so-called “Greenhouse enhanced effect”, which means that, it is the result of the emission of carbon dioxide, water vapor, ozone, methane and nitrous oxide. The warming of the atmosphere is related to the emission of greenhouse gases.
Anthropogenic particles in the stratosphere reflect and absorb solar radiation and therefore decrease the greenhouse effect. These anthropogenic particles develop from the emission of sulphur dioxide, which comes from fossil fuel burning. (Sulphur dioxide shooting ship) Aerosol concentrations, which are transformed into sulphur dioxide, can change the size and number of clouds and so cool the atmosphere and produce a negative radiative forcing.
Large amounts of aerosol concentrations are released by volcanic activity.

Although the energy level of the sun varies, any change in the atmosphere triggered by for example the increase of greenhouse gases will eventually have an effect on climate change. For example cloud distribution, changes in rainfall, temperatures of atmosphere and oceans. Ecological systems will be affected over time.

Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change By John Theodore Houghton
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6918/abs/nature01286.html
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1523-1739.2001.015002320.x