Climate change mitigation - Why care? (Estonia)

Climate change is one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats. Global surface temperature increased by 0.74 ± 0.18 °C during the last century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century is caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation.

Figure1 shows that annual mean air temperature in Estonia has risen in recent decades.

Figure 1. Trend of annual mean air temperature at Võru and Ristna monitoring stations, 1951-2006 (Estonian Meteorology and Hydrology Institute)