The Climate Change Monitoring Services (CCMS) is taking steps to bring this evidence to the public's attention, with the goal of building support for action to reduce the heat-trapping gas emissions that cause global warming. We have developed - and always updated - a world map, viewable online and also available as an Online Maps, that shows where the fingerprints and harbingers of global warming have occurred in recent years. By showing the local consequences of climate change, it brings the message home effectively.

Frustrated because a friend or colleague says global warming is the future's problem?

Compelling new evidence demonstrates that global warming is already under way with consequences that must be faced today as well as tomorrow. The evidence is of two kinds:

• Fingerprints of global warming are indicators of the global, long-term warming trend observed in the historical record. They include heat waves, sea-level rise, melting glaciers and warming of the poles.
• Harbingers are events that foreshadow the impacts likely to become more frequent and widespread with continued warming. They include spreading disease, earlier spring arrival, plant and animal range shifts, coral reef bleaching, downpours, and droughts and fires.