The global warming is not uniformly distributed over the Earth. The polar regions are especially sensitive for climate change and the warming in the Arctic is more than twice as fast as for the Earth on average. The effects of this warming are large, with a dramatic loss of sea ice as an example.

How and why the atmosphere moves is studied within dynamic meteorology. The atmosphere is never still and its movement can be described by partial differential equations which describe how changes in speed, density, pressure and temperature occur. We study these movements from the smallest scale of turbulence to planetary waves.

A continued change in the atmospheric content of greenhouse gases and particles is estimated to result in future warming well above 1.5°C, compared with pre-industrial levels. It is uncertain how much heating is masked by the cooling effect of the particles, especially the effect of the particles on the distribution and properties of the clouds.