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Climate change for kids
Earth has warmed by about 1ºF over the past 100 years. But why? And how? Well, scientists are not exactly sure. The Earth could be getting warmer on its own, but many of the world's leading climate scientists think that things people do are helping to make the Earth warmer.
Greenhouse Effect, Climate Change,
and Global Warming
 
Scientists are sure about the greenhouse effect. They know that greenhouse gases make the Earth warmer by trapping energy in the atmosphere.
Climate is the long-term average of a region's weather events lumped together. For example, it's possible that a winter day in Buffalo, New York, could be sunny and mild, but the average weather – the climate – tells us that Buffalo's winters will mainly be cold and include snow and rain. Climate change represents a change in these long-term weather patterns. They can become warmer or colder. Annual amounts of rainfall or snowfall can increase or decrease.
Global warming refers to an average increase in the Earth's temperature, which in turn causes changes in climate. A warmer Earth may lead to changes in rainfall patterns, a rise in sea level, and a wide range of impacts on plants, wildlife, and humans. When scientists talk about the issue of climate change, their concern is about global warming caused by human activities
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Greenhouse Earth
What happens when you go into a greenhouse on a sunny day? It's hot, isn't it? That's because the glass in the greenhouse traps the heat from the sun. This gas carbon dioxide does the same in the earth's atmosphere. It acts like glass in a greenhouse, doing the same as my feathers do when I'm swimming in the very cold sea: my feathers keep me warm, the glass in the greenhouse keeps the plants inside warm, and the carbon dioxide keeps the planet warm. Without it, we'd freeze. Too much of it means that we boil! Because people are burning fuels with carbon in (that's oil, gas and coal which you use in cars, aeroplanes, power stations and so on), all this carbon gets dumped into the air, mixed with the oxygen we all breathe, and so adds to our greenhouse gas problem. And the planet warms some more.
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