The rise in temperature isn't only because of humans.

How is climate change affecting our planet?

Above is an image of the Hunga Tonga volcano eruption

For this new section, I wanted to do some research strictly about climate change and how it has been affecting the weather the weird weather we have been seeing this summer specifically the scorching temperatures that have been recorded around the earth. The article I read titled, "Scientists look beyond climate change and El Nino for other factors that heat up Earth" written by Seth Borenstein from AP News dove into some pretty interesting causes that I haven't seen yet regarding the unusually hot summer we have seen. The obvious effects I mentioned in my last piece in the blog about the scorching temperatures the article mentions, (El Nino and the burning of fossil fuels). But this article outlines some other effects that were more natural and nonhuman causing. One interesting cause the article outlined was the new shipping fuel rules that were put in place in 2020. According to the article, "Maritime shipping has for decades used dirty fuel that gives off particles that reflect sunlight in a process that actually cools the climate and masks some of the global warming"(Borenstein 1). The shipping companies have now switched to a "cleaner" fuel that has 80% less of the cooling particles that used to have that cooling effect which to many was very surprising. According to the article, atmospheric scientist Tiniel Wong of NASA and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Sulfur pollution from the fuel used to interact with low clouds would make them brighter and more reflective. But according to Wong that isn't happening as much now, he tracked changes in the clouds in these spots and he found a warming trend from the loss of the sulfur pollution. Another cause that was explored by this article was the eruption of an underwater volcano in the South Pacific called the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai underwater volcano in January 2022. According to the article, the volcano spewed 165 million tons of water, which is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas as vapor. The volcano also spewed 550,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere. According to the article one study has already revealed that the warming from the eruption could range from 1.5 degrees Celsius in some places to 1 degree Celsius of cooling in other places.