Climate Change: Guide Home

Climate refers to long-term weather patterns in a specific region, shaped by factors like temperature, precipitation, and wind. Climate change signifies significant alterations in these patterns over extended periods, often decades or more. While natural causes like volcanic eruptions can influence climate, human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, have become the dominant driver of recent climate change. This accelerated warming traps heat in the atmosphere, leading to rising global temperatures and a cascade of impacts including more extreme weather events, sea-level rise, disruptions to ecosystems, and increased risks to public health.

Source: 

National Geographic. (n.d.) Earth's changing climate. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/earths-changing-climate/

Adaptation

• The process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects. In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In some natural systems, human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate and its effects.

Carbon footprint

• A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by our actions.

Greenhouse gases

• A greenhouse gas is a chemical compound found in the Earth’s atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and other human-made gases. These gases allow much of the solar radiation to enter the atmosphere, where the energy strikes the Earth and warms the surface. Some of this energy is reflected back towards space as infrared radiation. A portion of this outgoing radiation bounces off the greenhouse gases, trapping the radiation in the atmosphere in the form of heat. The more greenhouse gas molecules there are in the atmosphere, the more heat is trapped, and the warmer it will become.

Mitigation

• Mitigation involves human actions to decrease the production of greenhouse gases or to increase their absorption from the atmosphere. Additionally, it encompasses measures to reduce other substances that indirectly or directly contribute to climate change.

Resilience

• The capacity of social, economic and environmental systems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure, while also maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning and transformation.

Sources:

Environmental Protection Agency. (2016, September 19). Glossary of climate change terms. https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climatechange/glossary-climate-change-terms_.html

U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2024, June 18). Energy and the environment explained: Greenhouse gases and the climate. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/energy-and-the-environment/greenhouse-gases-and-the-climate.php