What is Climate change?

Climate change’ is the name scientists use to describe any long-term change in the earth’s temperature and weather patterns over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. Scientists believe that climate change has been happening slowly over millions of years and that the Earth’s temperature has changed naturally many times.

Today however, scientists believe that in the last 150 years Earth has become hotter than it has been in over 400, 000 years. Scientists believe that the temperature of the earth is rising because of an increase in the amount of green house gases, the main one being carbon dioxide (CO2), released into the atmosphere. They describe this as carbon emissions. There has always been a layer of gases around the earth and CO2 is one of them.

This layer of gases is an important part of keeping the earth the right temperature to allow life to exist as we know it. The normal condition of the sun heating the earth and the gas layer allowing some heat to escape back into space but holding some in to keep the earth warm is called the ‘greenhouse effect’. In fact it works just like a greenhouse in a garden or plant nursery. Today however the layer of gasses has become thicker due to more carbon dioxide (CO2) and other green house gases being trapped in the atmosphere.

In order to stop dangerous climate change we need to find ways to cut back on how much CO2 we put into the atmosphere. You can do small things like turning off lights when not in use, buying locally grown food and products, using public transportation instead of driving, and recycling everything you can to be used again. All these small things can really add up when more and more people do them!