About climate change
What's climate change all about? We bring you the details you need to know. What’s the problem?For many years, people have gathered information about the weather in different places. This tells us what to expect at different times of year, and we call this pattern of weather the climate. In the past, the climate has often changed; over periods of thousands of years, large areas of the Earth have even been covered in thick ice. At other times, all the ice has melted. For the last 10,000 years in the UK, we have been somewhere inbetween - some snow and ice in the winter and none at all in the summer. But today the Earth’s climate is changing much more quickly than usual, and scientists agree that people are causing this. What is the 'greenhouse effect'?In a greenhouse, sunlight comes in through the glass and warms up the inside. The glass keeps the air inside warm, so the greenhouse stays warmer than the air outside it. Some gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, behave just like the glass of a greenhouse. And the more of these gases we pump out from car exhausts and from power stations and factories, the warmer the planet gets. How will climate change affect me?As the climate changes, we are likely to have more storms, water shortages and floods. We expect that some species of animals and plants will be able to survive, but that many of our old favourites may be in trouble. |
