• Question: Is Global Warming and Climate the same thing?

    Asked by anon-224272 to Stuart, Scott, Lisa, Jack, Caragh, Alex on 11 Nov 2019. This question was also asked by anon-224260.
    • Photo: Caragh Whitehead

      Caragh Whitehead answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      Because the earth is warming this is leading to changes in the climate. So it is not quite the same thing but people tend to use both terms to mean the same thing as they are related.

    • Photo: Alex Batchelor

      Alex Batchelor answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      So I don’t study climate change in lots of detail but this is what i understand of it.

      So global warming is the fact that the planet is getting warmer.
      Climate change is how this is going to change the weather we experience.

      I think a lot of scientists use climate change now instead of global warming because global warming makes it sound like everywhere is just going to get hotter. Its actually more complicated than that, a lot of places will get hotter but some will get wetter, or dryer, or have more extreme weather like storms. Some places might even get colder. The weather is super complicated so different places will have different things happen

    • Photo: Jack Saunders

      Jack Saunders answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      Both Caragh and Alex are correct about Global Warming – it is the fact the whole planet is getting warmer and this can cause nasty things such as changes to our weather and that can harm nature. As Alex says, there are many different terms for these effects (like Global Warming and Climate Change). I will try to explain them below:
      Climate is the Earth’s weather and temperature, and is looked at over around 30 years at a time. The changes to the Earth’s climate are so small that we have to look at them over a long time to see any changes.
      Climate change is any changes to this weather and temperature over time.
      Global warming is a type of climate change that means the Earth is getting warmer.
      When we talk about climate change as a problem, we mean the changes humans have made to the climate from burning fossil fuels which will result in bad things happening such as changes to the weather that will damage humans and nature. As Alex said, this can be areas of the world getting both hotter and colder.

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