ABSTRACT
According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2014 was the hottest year on record. For the year to date, global temperatures have measured 1.22 degrees Fahrenheit above the twentieth century average of 57.3 degrees Fahrenheit, making the period from January to August 2014 the third warmest period since records began in 1880 (Thompson and Climate Central, 2014). The 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized that the planet’s climate has been unequivocally warming since the 1950s, with many of the observed changes unprecedented over decades to millennia. “The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased” (IPCC, 2013). If measures are not taken and countries continue to emit greenhouse gases (GHGs) at sustained levels, the systems societies and ecosystems depend on will be threatened by increased temperatures, and the impacts of climate change will have dramatic consequences for food, water and energy systems.
