What is Climate Change?
Climate describes the average weather of an area over a long period of time. Climate change is the change in regional or global climate patterns, such as temperature, winds and rainfall, over a long period of time - decades to thousands of years.
Climate change can be a natural process, Earth's climate has changed several times over it's lifetime. There have been several cycles of ice-age and glacial retreat over the last million years on earth with the last ice-age ending approximately 7,000 years ago. These cycles can be explained by changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun however, there is a new major cause of climate change; humans.
Human activities are now having significant effects on the Earth's climate, we are contributing to natural climate change primarily through the emission of greenhouse gasses. The effects of this can be seen in increased air and ocean temperatures, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, increased rainfall and flooding along with many others.
