sonny-dev/inters-qdu huggingface dataset:
Query: Volcanoes have been relatively frequent and if anything, have exerted a cooling effect.

Relevant passages:
Volcano <=SEP=> A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object , such as Earth , that allows hot lava , volcanic ash , and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface .   Earth 's volcanoes occur because its crust is broken into 17 major , rigid tectonic plates that float on a hotter , softer layer in its mantle . Therefore , on Earth , volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging , and most are found underwater . For example , a mid-oceanic ridge , such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge , has volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates pulling apart ; the Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates coming together . Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust 's , e.g. , in the East African Rift and the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and Rio Grande Rift in North America . This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of `` plate hypothesis '' volcanism . Volcanism away from plate boundaries has also been explained as mantle plumes . These so-called `` hotspots '' , for example Hawaii , are postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs with magma from the core -- mantle boundary , 3,000 km deep in the Earth . Volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another .   Erupting volcanoes can pose many hazards , not only in the immediate vicinity of the eruption . One such hazard is that volcanic ash can be a threat to aircraft , in particular those with jet engines where ash particles can be melted by the high operating temperature ; the melted particles then adhere to the turbine blades and alter their shape , disrupting the operation of the turbine . Large eruptions can affect temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth 's lower atmosphere ( or troposphere ) ; however , they also absorb heat radiated up from the Earth , thereby warming the upper atmosphere ( or stratosphere ) . Historically , so-called volcanic winters have caused catastrophic famines .
Query: (Kerr 2007) points out that the sunlight-reflecting haze that cools much of the planet seems to have thinned over the past decade or so.

Relevant passages:
Pale Blue Dot <=SEP=> Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken on February 14 , 1990 , by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about kilometers ( miles , 40.5 AU ) , as part of the Family Portrait series of images of the Solar System .   In the photograph , Earth 's apparent size is less than a pixel ; the planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space , among bands of sunlight scattered by the camera 's optics .   Voyager 1 , which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System , was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space , at the request of astronomer and author Carl Sagan .

Titan (moon) <=SEP=> Titan is the largest moon of Saturn . It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere , and the only object in space other than Earth where clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found .   Titan is the sixth ellipsoidal moon from Saturn . Frequently described as a planet-like moon , Titan is 50 % larger than Earth 's Moon , and it is 80 % more massive . It is the second-largest moon in the Solar System , after Jupiter 's moon Ganymede , and is larger than the smallest planet , Mercury , but only 40 % as massive . Discovered in 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens , Titan was the first known moon of Saturn , and the sixth known planetary satellite ( after Earth 's Moon and the four Galilean moons of Jupiter ) . Titan orbits Saturn at 20 Saturn radii . From Titan 's surface , Saturn subtends an arc of 5.09 degrees and would appear 11.4 times larger in the sky than the Moon from Earth .   Titan is primarily composed of water ice and rocky material . Much as with Venus before the Space Age , the dense opaque atmosphere prevented understanding of Titan 's surface until new information from the Cassini -- Huygens mission in 2004 , including the discovery of liquid hydrocarbon lakes in Titan 's polar regions . The geologically young surface is generally smooth , with few impact craters , although mountains and several possible cryovolcanoes have been found .   The atmosphere of Titan is largely nitrogen ; minor components lead to the formation of methane and ethane clouds and nitrogen-rich organic smog . The climate -- including wind and rain -- creates surface features similar to those of Earth , such as dunes , rivers , lakes , seas ( probably of liquid methane and ethane ) , and deltas , and is dominated by seasonal weather patterns as on Earth . With its liquids ( both surface and subsurface ) and robust nitrogen atmosphere , Titan 's methane cycle is analogous to Earth 's water cycle , at the much lower temperature of about 94 K.
Query: The El Nino Southern Oscillation shows close correlation to global temperatures over the short term.

Relevant passages:
El Niño–Southern Oscillation <=SEP=> El Niño -- Southern Oscillation ( ENSO ) is an irregularly periodical variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean , affecting much of the tropics and subtropics . The warming phase is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña . Southern Oscillation is the accompanying atmospheric component , coupled with the sea temperature change : El Niño is accompanied with high , and La Niña with low air surface pressure in the tropical western Pacific . The two periods last several months each ( typically occur every few years ) and their effects vary in intensity .   The two phases relate to the Walker circulation , discovered by Gilbert Walker during the early twentieth century . The Walker circulation is caused by the pressure gradient force that results from a high pressure system over the eastern Pacific Ocean , and a low pressure system over Indonesia . When the Walker circulation weakens or reverses , an El Niño results , causing the ocean surface to be warmer than average , as upwelling of cold water occurs less or not at all . An especially strong Walker circulation causes a La Niña , resulting in cooler ocean temperatures due to increased upwelling .   Mechanisms that cause the oscillation remain under study . The extremes of this climate pattern 's oscillations cause extreme weather ( such as floods and droughts ) in many regions of the world . Developing countries dependent upon agriculture and fishing , particularly those bordering the Pacific Ocean , are the most affected .
Query: Mount Kilimanjaro's shrinking glacier is complicated and not due to just global warming.

Relevant passages:
Mount Kenya <=SEP=> Mount Kenya is the highest mountain in Kenya and the second-highest in Africa , after Kilimanjaro . The highest peaks of the mountain are Batian ( 5199 m ) , Nelion ( 5188 m ) and Point Lenana ( 4985 m ) . Mount Kenya is located in central Kenya , the heart of Kenya , about 16.5 km south of the equator , around 150 km north-northeast of the capital Nairobi . Mount Kenya is the source of the name of the Republic of Kenya .   Mount Kenya is a stratovolcano created approximately 3 million years after the opening of the East African rift .  Before glaciation , it was 7000 m high . It was covered by an ice cap for thousands of years . This has resulted in very eroded slopes and numerous valleys radiating from the centre . There are currently 11 small glaciers . The forested slopes are an important source of water for much of Kenya .   There are several vegetation bands from the base to the summit . The lower slopes are covered by different types of forest . Many alpine species are endemic to Mount Kenya , such as the giant lobelias and senecios and a local subspecies of rock hyrax . An area of 715 km2 around the centre of the mountain was designated a National Park  and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 . The park receives over 16,000 visitors per year .

Mount Kilimanjaro <=SEP=> Mount Kilimanjaro ( -LSB- pronˌkɪlɪmənˈdʒɑːroʊ -RSB- ) , with its three volcanic cones , `` Kibo '' , `` Mawenzi '' , and `` Shira '' , is a dormant volcano in Tanzania . It is the highest mountain in Africa , and rises approximately 4900 m from its base to 5895 m above sea level.The first persons proven to have reached the summit of the mountain were Hans Meyer , and Ludwig Purtscheller in 1889 . The mountain is part of the Kilimanjaro National Park and is a major climbing destination . The mountain has been the subject of many scientific studies because of its shrinking glaciers and disappearing ice fields .
Query: In 1905, PDO switched to a warm phase.

Relevant passages:
Pacific decadal oscillation <=SEP=> The Pacific Decadal Oscillation ( PDO ) is a robust , recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude Pacific basin . The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean , north of 20 ° N. Over the past century , the amplitude of this climate pattern has varied irregularly at interannual-to-interdecadal time scales ( meaning time periods of a few years to as much as time periods of multiple decades ) . There is evidence of reversals in the prevailing polarity ( meaning changes in cool surface waters versus warm surface waters within the region ) of the oscillation occurring around 1925 , 1947 , and 1977 ; the last two reversals corresponded with dramatic shifts in salmon production regimes in the North Pacific Ocean . This climate pattern also affects coastal sea and continental surface air temperatures from Alaska to California .   During a `` warm '' , or `` positive '' , phase , the west Pacific becomes cooler and part of the eastern ocean warms ; during a `` cool '' or `` negative '' phase , the opposite pattern occurs . The Pacific Decadal Oscillation was named by Steven R. Hare , who noticed it while studying salmon production pattern results in 1997 .   The Pacific Decadal Oscillation index is the leading empirical orthogonal function ( EOF ) of monthly sea surface temperature anomalies ( SST-A ) over the North Pacific ( poleward of 20 ° N ) after the global average sea surface temperature has been removed . This PDO index is the standardized principal component time series . A PDO ` signal ' has been reconstructed to 1661 through tree-ring chronologies in the Baja California area .
Query: In 1946, PDO switched to a cool phase.

Relevant passages:
Pacific decadal oscillation <=SEP=> The Pacific Decadal Oscillation ( PDO ) is a robust , recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude Pacific basin . The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean , north of 20 ° N. Over the past century , the amplitude of this climate pattern has varied irregularly at interannual-to-interdecadal time scales ( meaning time periods of a few years to as much as time periods of multiple decades ) . There is evidence of reversals in the prevailing polarity ( meaning changes in cool surface waters versus warm surface waters within the region ) of the oscillation occurring around 1925 , 1947 , and 1977 ; the last two reversals corresponded with dramatic shifts in salmon production regimes in the North Pacific Ocean . This climate pattern also affects coastal sea and continental surface air temperatures from Alaska to California .   During a `` warm '' , or `` positive '' , phase , the west Pacific becomes cooler and part of the eastern ocean warms ; during a `` cool '' or `` negative '' phase , the opposite pattern occurs . The Pacific Decadal Oscillation was named by Steven R. Hare , who noticed it while studying salmon production pattern results in 1997 .   The Pacific Decadal Oscillation index is the leading empirical orthogonal function ( EOF ) of monthly sea surface temperature anomalies ( SST-A ) over the North Pacific ( poleward of 20 ° N ) after the global average sea surface temperature has been removed . This PDO index is the standardized principal component time series . A PDO ` signal ' has been reconstructed to 1661 through tree-ring chronologies in the Baja California area .
Query: In 1977, PDO switched to a warm phase.

Relevant passages:
Pacific decadal oscillation <=SEP=> The Pacific Decadal Oscillation ( PDO ) is a robust , recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude Pacific basin . The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean , north of 20 ° N. Over the past century , the amplitude of this climate pattern has varied irregularly at interannual-to-interdecadal time scales ( meaning time periods of a few years to as much as time periods of multiple decades ) . There is evidence of reversals in the prevailing polarity ( meaning changes in cool surface waters versus warm surface waters within the region ) of the oscillation occurring around 1925 , 1947 , and 1977 ; the last two reversals corresponded with dramatic shifts in salmon production regimes in the North Pacific Ocean . This climate pattern also affects coastal sea and continental surface air temperatures from Alaska to California .   During a `` warm '' , or `` positive '' , phase , the west Pacific becomes cooler and part of the eastern ocean warms ; during a `` cool '' or `` negative '' phase , the opposite pattern occurs . The Pacific Decadal Oscillation was named by Steven R. Hare , who noticed it while studying salmon production pattern results in 1997 .   The Pacific Decadal Oscillation index is the leading empirical orthogonal function ( EOF ) of monthly sea surface temperature anomalies ( SST-A ) over the North Pacific ( poleward of 20 ° N ) after the global average sea surface temperature has been removed . This PDO index is the standardized principal component time series . A PDO ` signal ' has been reconstructed to 1661 through tree-ring chronologies in the Baja California area .
Query: "In 1999 New Scientist reported a comment by the leading Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, who said in an email interview with this author that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035.

Relevant passages:
Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report <=SEP=> The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report ( AR4 ) is a report on climate change created with the help of a large number of contributors , both scientists and governmental representatives . There has been considerable political controversy over a small number of errors found in the report , and there have been calls for review of the process used to formulate the report . The overwhelming majority view of scientists with expertise in climate change is that errors , when found , are corrected , and the issues as identified do not undermine the conclusions of the report that the climate system is warming in response to increased levels of greenhouse gases , largely due to human activities .

Ganges <=SEP=> The Ganges ( -LSB- ˈɡændʒiːz -RSB- ) , also Ganga ( -LSB- ˈɡəŋɡaː -RSB- ) , is a trans-boundary river of Asia which flows through the nations of India and Bangladesh . The 2525 km river rises in the western Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand , and flows south and east through the Gangetic Plain of North India into Bangladesh , where it empties into the Bay of Bengal . It is the third largest river in the world by discharge .   The Ganges is the most sacred river to Hindus . It is also a lifeline to millions of Indians who live along its course and depend on it for their daily needs . It is worshipped as the goddess Ganga in Hinduism . It has also been important historically , with many former provincial or imperial capitals ( such as Kannauj , Kampilya , Kara , Prayag or Allahabad , Kashi , Pataliputra or Patna , Hajipur , Munger , Bhagalpur , Murshidabad , Baharampur , Nabadwip , Saptagram , Kolkata and Dhaka ) located on its banks .   The Ganges was ranked as the fifth most polluted river of the world in 2007 . Pollution threatens not only humans , but also more than 140 fish species , 90 amphibian species and the endangered Ganges river dolphin . The levels of fecal coliform from human waste in the waters of the river near Varanasi are more than 100 times the Indian government 's official limit . The Ganga Action Plan , an environmental initiative to clean up the river , has been a major failure thus far , due to corruption , lack of technical expertise , poor environmental planning , and lack of support from religious authorities .
Query: The statement that so-called greenhouse gases,  especially CO2, contribute to near-surface atmospheric warming is in  glaring contradiction to well-known physical laws relating to gas and  vapour, as well as to general caloric theory.'

Relevant passages:
Scientific consensus on climate change <=SEP=> There is currently a strong scientific consensus that the Earth is warming and that this warming is mainly caused by human activities. This consensus is supported by various studies of scientists' opinions and by position statements of scientific organizations, many of which explicitly agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis reports.  Nearly all actively publishing climate scientists (97–98%) support the consensus on anthropogenic climate change, and the remaining 2% of contrarian studies either cannot be replicated or contain errors.

James Hansen <=SEP=> James Edward Hansen ( born 29 March 1941 ) is an American adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University . He is best known for his research in climatology , his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming , and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change . In recent years he has become a climate activist to mitigate the effects of climate change , on a few occasions leading to his arrest .   In 2000 , Hansen advanced an alternative view of global warming over the last 100 years , arguing that during that time frame the negative forcing via aerosols and the positive forcing via largely balanced each other out , and that the 0.74 ± 0.18 ° C net rise in average global temperatures could mostly be explained by greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide , such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons . However , even then he wrote `` the future balance of forcings is likely to shift toward dominance of CO2 over aerosols ''
Query: Different areas of science are understood with varying degrees of certainty.

Relevant passages:
Science <=SEP=> Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe .   Contemporary science is typically subdivided into the natural sciences , which study the material universe ; the social sciences , which study people and societies ; and the formal sciences , which study logic and mathematics . The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations . Disciplines which use science , like engineering and medicine , may also be considered to be applied sciences .   From classical antiquity through the 19th century , science as a type of knowledge was more closely linked to philosophy than it is now , and in the Western world the term `` natural philosophy '' once encompassed fields of study that are today associated with science , such as astronomy , medicine , and physics . However , during the Islamic Golden Age foundations for the scientific method were laid by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics . While the classification of the material world by the ancient Indians and Greeks into air , earth , fire and water was more philosophical , medieval Middle Easterns used practical and experimental observation to classify materials .   In the 17th and 18th centuries , scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws . Over the course of the 19th century , the word `` science '' became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world . It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology , chemistry , and physics reached their modern shapes . That same time period also included the origin of the terms `` scientist '' and `` scientific community '' , the founding of scientific institutions , and the increasing significance of their interactions with society and other aspects of culture .
Query: When accelerating ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica are factored into sea level projections, the estimated sea level rise by 2100 is between 75cm to 2 metres.

Relevant passages:
Sea level rise <=SEP=> A sea level rise is an increase in the volume of water in the world 's oceans , resulting in an increase in global mean sea level . Sea level rise is usually attributed to global climate change by thermal expansion of the water in the oceans and by melting of Ice sheets and glaciers on land . Melting of floating ice shelves or icebergs at sea raises sea levels only slightly .   Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less than the global average . Local factors might include tectonic effects , subsidence of the land , tides , currents , storms , etc. .  Sea level rise is expected to continue for centuries . Because of the slow inertia , long response time for parts of the climate system , it has been estimated that we are already committed to a sea-level rise of approximately 2.3 m for each degree Celsius of temperature rise within the next 2,000 years . IPCC Summary for Policymakers , AR5 , 2014 , indicated that the global mean sea level rise will continue during the 21st century , very likely at a faster rate than observed from 1971 to 2010 . Projected rates and amounts vary . A January 2017 NOAA report suggests a range of GMSL rise of 0.3 -- 2.5 m possible during the 21st century .   Sea level rises can considerably influence human populations in coastal and island regions and natural environments like marine ecosystems .