Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change: An Overview

Although initially it was not accepted by many that climate change is real, attention of the world was urgently drawn towards climate change in 1990 when the First Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published (Prabhakar and Shaw 2008). The IPCC is the leading scientific body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences. IPCC reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide and relevant to the understanding of climate change. Thousands of scientists all over the world contribute to the work of IPCC on a voluntary basis as authors, contributors and reviewers. In its report in 2007, IPCC asserted that quite significant climate changes are about to happen, which are linked to increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. (IPCC 2007a, b).