Have you seen this patient? This individual is rather spherical and older; aged approximately 4.5 billion years; and has been going through some disturbing changes, such as getting warmer, especially in recent decades.
It's not every day that the planet Earth shows up at your clinic, emergency department, hospital, or operating room, but have you been paying attention to what is happening to the Earth? An abundance of scientific data show that the Earth's climate has been changing:
The Earth's average surface temperature has risen approximately 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9°C) since the late 1800s, with most of this rise taking place in the past 35 years.
The five warmest years in recorded history have occurred since 2010.
Each year from 1993 to 2016, Greenland has been losing an average of 281 billion tons of ice mass and Antarctica an average of 119 billion tons, with Antarctica's loss rate tripling over the last decade.
Sea levels rose 8 inches in the past century, with the rise in the past two decades close to twice that of the past century.
Intense rainfall events are increasing in number.
Surface ocean water acidity has increased 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
