Earth's climate has changed constantly over its history. The planet has experienced many cold periods, as well as several warm periods. For example, about ten thousand years ago, the Earth cooled during a period known as the Younger Dryas, when the average global temperature was about 3œ Celsius colder than it is today. However, about six thousand years ago, the Earth reached the middle of an interglacial period, known as the Mid-Holocene Maximum. The temperature then was 1œ Celsius higher than today's norm. Some of the natural mechanisms causing this climatological variability include: drift of plate tectonics, volcanic activities, ocean circulations, variations in Earth's orbit, and solar variability.

The rapid warming that has occurred in the past hundred years seems to coincide with the socioeconomic development and industrialization of humankind. During the past century, human life and societies began to depend heavily on burning fossil fuels. As a result, increasing amounts of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere. Global temperatures and CO2 levels evince a consistent upward trend during the same period. Therefore, many scientists believe that human activity may have contributed to global warming.

Various coupled atmosphere-ocean models have projected that Earth will experience an average temperature increase over the course of the 21st century of between 1.4œ and 5.8œ Celsius. Some possible consequences of this global warming include higher maximum and minimum temperatures, more hot days and heat waves, fewer cold days and frost days, more intense precipitation events, more summer drying and drought, increased tropical cyclone intensity, increased Asian summer monsoon precipitation variability, intensified droughts and floods associated with El Nino events, and increased intensity of midlatitude storms. Global warming will also exert some profound effects on many other social and environmental issues. For example, the distribution of water resources and farming may be changed by future warmer climates. Warming-induced sea-level rise can have significant effects on many countries' coasts. Arctic seaice melting can also have geopolitical and economic consequences.

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