People often use the terms global warming and climate change interchangeably, but they describe different concepts.
Global warming refers to Earth’s increasing surface temperature. Our planet’s surface temperature has been rising for the past century-and-a-half, with the most significant rise happening from the 1970s to the present. The increase is caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases, which are released when we burn fossil fuels such as coal.
Climate change refers to changes in Earth’s climate at all scales, from local to global, because of human activity. While climate change includes global warming, it also refers to changing weather patterns at a local scale – such as more extreme winter and summer temperatures, intense heatwaves and increased storm frequency – as well as large-scale changes such as melting sea ice and rising sea levels.
Global warming is therefore a more specific term than climate change. While climate change encompasses a wide range of changes at both local and global scales, global warming refers specifically to the rapidly increasing surface temperature of our planet.
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Top image: polar bear in Svalbard. Credit: Getty
