• Question: what is climate change

    Asked by star46car to Philip, Jake, Ann, Annette, Amy Heather on 22 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Amy Heather Fitzpatrick

      Amy Heather Fitzpatrick answered on 22 Nov 2019:

      Climate change (or climate breakdown), is the process of our planet heating up. The Earth has warmed by an average of 1°C in the last 100 years and that means big changes in the weather, the ecosystems we live in and that animals live in and more. The changing climate makes our weather more unpredictable, like getting snow in Ireland, last March, or having 30°C in an Irish summer. As temperatures rise, some areas will get wetter and lots of animals (and humans!) could find they’re not able to adapt to their changing climate and have to move country.

    • Photo: Philip Schuler

      Philip Schuler answered on 22 Nov 2019:

      Climate has, is and always will naturally change due to very complex dynamics.
      Under “climate change” we generally understand the contribution of humans to that ever changing climate by, for example, emission of greenhouse gases, but also landuse changes (which impact directly/indirectly on the gas concentration in the atmosphere.

      While there are global estimates on the behaviour of temperatures (and more complicated, rainfall), these changing dynamics are supposed to be regionally quite different.

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