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Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have increased steadily since pre-industrial times.

Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the most significant driver of climate change since pre-industrial times. Natural influences such as climate oscillations can also lead to climate fluctuations. However, by increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, humans are having a profound impact on our climate.

Nearly half of our emissions come from agriculture, mainly methane from farm animals. Our energy sector is the second-largest contributor, mainly carbon dioxide resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels for various purposes like driving, air travel, manufacturing and coal-fired electricity generation.

The following resources provide information about atmospheric greenhouse gases and how we know human activities have driven rapid increases in emissions.

Articles

• What is climate change?

• Greenhouse gases and the atmosphere

• Methane – a greenhouse gas

• Carbon dioxide and climate

• Evidence of climate change in Aotearoa

• Aotearoa’s contributions to climate emissions

• Human contributions to climate change – how we know

• Our atmosphere and climate 2023

• Greenhouse gas concentrations – Stats NZ environmental indicator

Media

• Human contributions to climate change – video

• How do we know the data is robust? – video

• Aotearoa’s climate connections – infographic

• Climate change creates additional pressures – infographic

Activities

• Utilising Our climate, our biodiversity, our future

• Interpreting representations using climate data

• Climate data analysis

Diagram: Ministry for the Environment, Stats NZ, and data providers, and licensed by the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.