GLOBAL WARMING

Climate change means any long-term, significant change in the weather patterns of an area.

A BRIEF EXPLANATION

It's okay if you don't know what global warming is. Bluntly, it's defined as an increase in global temperatures due to the greenhouse effect. Global warming is a measure of climate change.

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

Here’s the basic setup:

Sun rays shine on the planet and enter our atmosphere. Our atmosphere retains some of that heat, thanks to naturally occurring greenhouse gases like water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane which trap the heat in. The reason we don't overheat is that the Arctic, Antarctica and other frozen surfaces act like a mirror, reflecting a good part of the sun's rays back into space.

But since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humans have been pumping massive amounts of heat-trapping gases into our atmosphere, causing the planet to warm up.

The ice has started melting and we are losing our mirror. There is 32% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than there was at the start of the Industrial era.¹

Earth has become much warmer over the past 150 years.

^{Source: www.cru.uea.uk/cru/info/warming/}

It's scary because In the 100,000 years that humans have been wandering about, the planet has never been more than a degree or two warmer than it is today. But this influx of greenhouse gases will mean a rise in temperature between 1.8 and 4 degrees over the next century. And that's a modest estimate.

The effects of global warming will be complex. And, they'll extend further than we might like to think.

_{1 Source: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/Science/Greenhouse_Gases.asp}