Exploring factors that influence climate change

Abstract

Climate change is becoming an increasingly hot topic in the scientific and everyday world as the impacts are being seen more frequently. Increasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is the principle driver of climate change. The purpose of this study is to discover what factors in the socioeconomic world have a significant relationship with the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In seeing which factors cause an increase in greenhouse gases, climate scientists, governments and geoengineers can implement certain tactics pertaining to these to reduce climate change. Data from the years 1990 and 2012 was gathered from 97 randomly selected countries (removed 3 countries due to insufficient amounts of data) in order to model the changes over a twenty year period. This study will be using greenhouse gas emissions, forested area, agricultural land, livestock production and a few other factors to determine if said factors have a significant relationship on whether or not greenhouse gas emissions increased or decreased between 1990 and 2012. Results showed that livestock production and agricultural land had a significant relationship on the change in greenhouse gas emissions. Also, the difference in methane emissions, livestock production and forested area had a significant impact on whether or not greenhouse gases increased or not. Key Words: Climate Change, Countries, Greenhouse Gases

Discipline: Statistics

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Karen Buro