What is climate change?

What is climate change?
Bob the duck wants to understand more about climate change. Let us go on an adventure with him!

Bob’s story:

Bob and his family like to travel to the warmer regions when the cold winter comes and their food becomes buried in the snow. He and his family felt the winter cold creeping closer and prepared to leave for a summer vacation, far away from the cold. When bob and his family arrived at their summer home they found that it was snowing. Bob’s dad said that the same time the previous year the weather was nice and warm. The cold weather did not stop and snow kept on falling. Bob decided that he had to make the most of it and started building a snowman outside. But, Bob’s dad was very sad, the soil outside was much too hard for him to peck out nice juicy worms to eat. Luckily they had canned worms in their pantry. Bob’s dad decided to ask him if he could find out more about this strange occurrence, where the snow does not want to go away during their summer vacation.

What is the difference between climate and weather?

Bob was a little confused between the meaning of the words “weather” and “climate”. He decided to find out more about each of these words so that he could understand what climate change is all about. Let’s explore with Bob the duck.

When someone asks you what the weather for your town or city will be like the next day, you usually look on the news, internet or in a newspaper, to find the correct information. The weather report for a place shows you what will be happening in the atmosphere at that place during a certain time or day. It will show you lots of important information, such as what the temperature will be, if there will be lots of clouds or none, and if there will be snow the following day or not. Bob the duck decided to look up the weather for the next day in their summer vacation town- “Sunny-duck town”. The weather report indicated that the next day would be freezing cold with snow falling all day long! There will be so many clouds that no sun will come through and the wind will be blowing very strong. Bob the duck was really sad because he wanted to go for a swim at the beach.

When someone asks you what the climate for your town is, you do not look at “climate” for the next day, because that is the weather. Climate is the average weather conditions for a place over a certain period of time. Do you know what average means? When you have lots of warm days in a month and there were only two cold days, there were more warm than cold days. So, then you say that on average you were feeling more warm than cold days in the month.

Bob the duck decided that it would be interesting to find out what the climate has been during their vacation months in Sunny-duck town, for the last ten years. He found that for these months in Sunny-duck town, the weather was mostly nice and warm. So the average temperature for those months was very nice. But, Bob the duck realized that that over the past few years, the cold winter weather from the winter months of Sunny-duck town was creeping closer and closer to their summer vacation months. He also realized that for the past few years, the warm summer weather in Sunny-duck town started to arrive earlier, when it should still have been snowing. Bob the duck was so confused, he just realised that the seasons in Sunny-duck town has been changing slowly.

Climate change definition – So, just what does the climate change say?

Bob the duck just found out that climate change is when there is a big difference in the normal climate patterns over a long period of time. Global climate change appears to be taking place very fast. Some places are getting drier where there used to be lots of rain and other places are being flooded where there used to be little rain! This is known as some of the climate change effects. More effects of climate change include: People may start to feel sick with headaches and asthma when temperature changes are to extreme; and shifting seasons may affect migratory animals, such as Bob the duck and his family, who may not survive the extremely cold and unexpected weather conditions in their warm migratory region.

Causes of climate change, global warming and climate change connection:

Why is this happening and why is our summer and winter months getting mixed up? Scientists believe that pollution is getting trapped in the atmosphere and heat from the sun is also getting trapped. This occurrence is called the greenhouse effect and it is said that it is causing the whole planet to experience climate change because it confuses weather patterns. The connection between global warming and climate change is that global warming is causing climate change to take place.

Bob the duck and his family need your help to try and stop climate change. Now that you have some climate change facts, let us try and fight pollution that causes global warming, which in turn causes climate change to take place. Do you want to help Bob the duck and how do you think you can help to prevent and reduce pollution?