So What's Climate Change?

By Maddy August 18, 2024

Do you know what climate change is? You might have heard the word in school, a book, or even your parents talking about it.

But really, what is it? What causes it? What are the consequences?

This article will broadly answer all these questions for you. When you finish reading, you will know much more about the myths and facts about climate change, and how you can help!

In order to understand climate change, we have to learn what a climate is. First things first, the climate is different than the weather. Here’s a good definition “Weather is a specific event—like a rainstorm or hot day—that happens over a few hours, days or weeks. Climate is the average weather conditions in a place over 30 years or more” (NASA Climate Kids). Basically, climate is the weather that happens most often or the average weather of a place. Below is a chart that might help you understand as well!

A poster explaining the difference between climate and weather, found at Poet Prints Writing

So based on the definition of climate, what do you think climate change is? Think about it for a couple of seconds.

That’s right! Climate change is a change in climate. Right now, the climate of the whole world is getting a teeny bit hotter every year. This process is called Global Warming.

Wait- Why does it matter? Temperatures have only risen by one-degree Fahrenheit in the last one hundred years! (According to this study here) That doesn’t seem too much! Well, one degree is actually a lot for Earth to handle. The bit of extra heat means ice in the North or South Poles is melting into the ocean quicker than before. That means more water in the ocean, which causes sea level rise, which means more flooding on land, and other consequences too. So how can we stop this all from happening? First, we have to find out what causes all this heat.

What causes global warming? The answer is greenhouse gasses. Greenhouse gasses are any gasses that trap the heat from the sun down on earth, making earth hotter. The most well-known greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. According to iea.org, we released 37.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2023 alone. That’s over nine billion, two hundred fifty million elephants worth of weight! These greenhouse gases can come from your car, from factories, volcanoes, pretty much everywhere. But how do they heat the earth?

Well, these greenhouse gases are sort of like a blanket around the earth. If they build up, the blanket is too thick, and the Earth gets hotter because the heat from the sun can’t escape through the blanket. So we should just take out all greenhouse gasses, right? Not really. If that blanket of greenhouse gasses is too thin, or we don’t have that blanket at all, the sun’s heat would bounce right off the Earth, and it would get too cold.

These following diagrams will demonstrate how the layer of greenhouse gasses heat the earth. Be sure to scroll through the caption to read the full description!

A diagram of the Earth and Sun, where there is the perfect amount of carbon dioxide. — This picture above is a diagram of the Earth and sun. Imagine that blue circle around the earth is that layer of greenhouse gas and the red lines are the rays of heat coming from the sun. Do you notice how the rays of sun hit the earth? This is shown by the big red arrow going from the sun to the earth. Now, look at the other two red arrows on either side of that big red arrow. Those arrows represent how the heat reacts when it bounces off the Earth. The arrow on the right side is able to escape through that layer of greenhouse gas and into outer space! But do you see what happens to the arrow on the left? It can’t get through that blue line. Because some of the heat leaves and some of the heat stays, this leaves the Earth at a perfect temperature!

A diagram of the earth and sun where there is too much carbon dioxide. — This diagram is almost the same as the previous one, except that the blue line (which represents the Greenhouse Gasses) is much thicker. This shows that the layer of greenhouse gasses in this diagram is also much thicker. Take a look at how the red arrows react to this. As you can see, none of the heat from the sun can escape from the Earth’s atmosphere! As you can probably imagine, this means that the Earth is way too hot for us to survive!

a diagram of the earth and sun where there is too little carbon dioxide. — In this diagram, the layer of greenhouse gas is super thin. As you can see, the red ray of heat bounces right off the earth, leaving no heat behind! This means that the Earth is much too cold for everyone living on earth. (More at www.epa.gov )

Normally, Climate Change is natural. Other natural factors make temperatures go up and down, like volcano eruptions! The climate changes slowly, over thousands of years, so plants and animals are able to adapt to these tiny changes. But right now, all of these unnatural greenhouse gasses we are creating from our cars and factories are making the earth warm up a lot faster than it used to, and our planet doesn’t have time to react. But the thing is, it’s not too late! We can slow climate change by working together and changing our lifestyles. Small changes in our daily actions can make small differences, and those can add up. We can do this!

Want to learn more? Here’s my favorite website: https://climatekids.nasa.gov