Climate change

Climate change refers to long-term, broader changes in the Earth’s climate system. These changes happen over decades to millions of years, and examples include rising temperature (aka global warming), rising sea levels, shrinking of polar ice caps, extreme weather events (i.e. stronger heatwaves, hurricanes, wildfires, and cyclones), and melting mountain glaciers. This term mainly refers to the changes from mid 20th century to the present time, whereby climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels.