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This text will teach you about climate change so that you understand the other articles a little bit better.        I included this so that you will understand the concept of climate change and you will understand the simple questions of climate change.  

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This text will teach you about climate change so that you understand the other articles a little bit better.        I included this so that you will understand the concept of climate change and you will understand the simple questions of climate change.  

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Summary
This article is about climate change and the science behind climate change, and it answers some basic questions about climate change that people have asked.

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The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof

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Definitive answers to the big questions.

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This article will teach you about climate change and greenhouse gases so that when they talk about them later on you will understand what it is. 

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This article will teach you about climate change and greenhouse gases so that when they talk about them later on you will understand what it is. 

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This article

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A breakthrough deal to attempt to limit global temperature rises was agreed at a conference of world nations in December 2015. These charts from the time show how and why the Earth's climate is changing.

1. What is the problem?

The world is getting warmer

The average temperature of the Earth's surface has increased by about 0.85°C (1.4F) in the last 100 years. Up until 2015, 13 of the 14 warmest years had been recorded in the 21st Century. 2015 then became the hottest year on record, but was surpassed by record-breaking 2016.

10 warmest years

10 coldest years

20th Century average temperature

Hotter

Colder

Source: NOAA

2. Why is this happening?

Greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide

Scientists believe that gases released from industry and agriculture (known as emissions) are adding to the natural greenhouse effect, the way the Earth's atmosphere traps some of the energy from the Sun.

Human activities such as burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Carbon-absorbing forests are also being cut down.

The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years and reached a record high in May 2015. But 2016 marked five consecutive years of CO2 increases of at least two parts per million.

Scripps CO2 Program, data from the Mauna Loa Observatory

3. What are the effects?

Arctic sea ice melt

Higher temperatures, extreme weather events and higher sea levels are all linked to a warming climate and could have a drastic effect on the world's regions.

Since 1900, sea levels have risen by on average about 19cm globally. The rate of sea-level rise has accelerated in recent decades, placing a number of islands and low-lying countries at risk.

The retreat of polar ice sheets is an important contributor to this rise.

Arctic sea ice is also shrinking because of higher temperatures, though it makes little contribution to raised sea levels.

An area of sea ice roughly 10 times the size of the UK has been lost when the current day is compared with average levels from the early 1980s.

Arctic sea ice min. extent: 1980, 7.8 million sq km. 2015, 4.6 million sq km

Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center

4. What does the future hold?

Higher temperatures and more extreme weather

The scale of potential impacts is uncertain.

The changes could drive shortages in freshwater, bring about major changes in food production conditions and cause a rise in the number of casualties from floods, storms, heat waves and droughts.

This is because climate change is expected to increase the frequency of extreme weather events - however linking any single event to global warming is complicated.

Projected temperature change (1986-2005 to 2081-2100)

If greenhouse gas emissions peak between 2010-2020 and then decline substantially (RCP2.6)

If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century (RCP8.5)

Source: International Panel on Climate Change - Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)

5. What can be done?

World's top ten greenhouse gas emitters

The top 10 greenhouse gas emitters make up over 70% of total emissions

Source: Carbon Brief, figures are for 2012

6. Limiting the damage

By the end of October 2015, 146 countries had submitted national climate plans on curbing emissions that are expected to form the cornerstone of a binding, global treaty on climate change.

According to a UN report, submissions in their current form point to a rise of 2.7°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

Scientists have determined that if temperature rises surpass 2°C, this will lead to substantial and dangerous climate impacts, which will hit the world's poor in particular.

Average warming (°C) projected by 2100

Source: Climate Action Tracker, data compiled by Climate Analytics, ECOFYS, New Climate Institute and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

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Six graphics that explain climate change as world leaders gathered in Paris for COP21.

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This article will teach you how you can help prevent climate change and you can help stop it and prevent it. I included this so that you can help the earth and keep it healthy.

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This article will teach you how you can help prevent climate change and you can help stop it and prevent it. I included this so that you can help the earth and keep it healthy.

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This is about ways that you can help prevent climate change and ways you can stop climate change and help the earth and make it a healthier earth

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6 Easy Ways to Fight Climate Change Every Day

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This text will teach you how scientists know that the world is warming so that you know how they figured it out.  I included it so that you can learn how scientists know that 2015 was the warmest year on record and how the scientists know that the world is warming.

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This text will teach you how scientists know that the world is warming so that you know how they figured it out.  I included it so that you can learn how scientists know that 2015 was the warmest year on record and how the scientists know that the world is warming.

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this text shares how scientists know that the world is warming and what they did to figure it out.

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Explainer: How scientists know Earth is warming

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Scientists can calculate global temperatures, both present and past. Their findings show that the planet is rapidly heating up.

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This article will show you the difference that climate change has made on the world around us and what will continue to happen if we don't stop using fossil fuels.  

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This article will show you the difference that climate change has made on the world around us and what will continue to happen if we don't stop using fossil fuels.  

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This text is about how climate change is affecting the earth and what the impact on the earth and it teaches you about what climate change is and how it is.

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Climate change describes a change in the average conditions in a region over a long period of time.

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Explainer: How scientists know Earth is warming

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Scientists can calculate global temperatures, both present and past. Their findings show that the planet is rapidly heating up.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Home - Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. Current news and data streams about global warming and climate change from NASA.

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The more trees that grow, the warmer the world will become

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The more trees that grow, the warmer the world will become

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The Science of Climate Change Explained: Facts, Evidence and Proof

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Definitive answers to the big questions.

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WOW

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Traditional practices have also undergone the impact of climate change. Before her grandfather died, Jennifer interviewed him about his favorite spot for hunting seals, which was only reachable when the water was frozen solid. "It doesn't get that cold anymore, so it doesn't actually freeze anymore," Jennifer says. "The traditional knowledge that has been passed down orally, telling stories of that particular place, it was gone with him. He was the last of his family to have known all the traditional knowledge of that specific place."

A week before we were in Cape Dorset, ice barricaded the Inuit community. Ships normally can get through the Arctic for only about six weeks in the summer. The only way out most of the year is by snowmobile or airplane, according to what locals told me.

In July, the roads are ditches of mud. Clouds of mosquitoes swarmed Brianna Rowe, 26, a shipmate I followed as she interviewed Inuit children and teachers about their lives, school, family, and traditions.

Brianna, who works for Reach the World and is director of the climate-change education project Disappearing Ice, connects classrooms with travelers via the Internet, so kids can travel the world virtually. She was using her vacation, as a student member of the Explorers Club, to connect U.S. classrooms with Arctic classrooms so kids can learn about one another's cultures - including how the U.S. is one of the main countries affecting the climate much farther north.

"The decisions that people make in the U.S. have a global impact," Brianna tells Teen Vogue. "It is important for everybody to be aware of their decisions, and their impact on the environment has an effect on the entire world's environment."

Kristin Gates, a park ranger who trekked alone across the Brooks Range, knows this all too well. Part of the year, 30-year-old Kristin patrols Denali National Park by dog sled, and she's making a short film about plastics pollution and garbage in the Arctic. "Climate change is something that affects us every day during the winter months," she tells Teen Vogue. Frozen rivers are Alaska's highways, and when they don't freeze solid, travel becomes dangerous and difficult.

Unfortunately, mushing (a form of travel that relies on dogs to pull a sled), which Kristin was hoping to learn about first-hand, is now almost nonexistent. Dog mushing as a practice mostly died out after Inuit communities were settled in villages by the Canadian government in the 1950s, so she heard stories about the old days but has not found anyone traveling by dog sled. Nowadays, travel mostly uses motors and gas, in four-wheelers, snowmobiles, and trucks. Kristin enlisted some of us from the ship and others from the community to clean up the beach. In about an hour we collected 17 bags of trash, a potential threat to seabirds and mammals.

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I Went to the Canadian Arctic and Saw Climate Change's Impact First-Hand

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In this reported piece, 12-year-old writer Roxanna Pearl Beebe-Center explains what she learned about the impact of climate change on animals while visiting the Canadian Arctic.

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"Consume less meat. Eating less meat is a surefire way to lower your carbon footprint. Beef and lamb are large sources of methane, a notorious global warming gas. Consider this: a single pound of beef takes over 5,000 gallons of water to generate. You don’t have to go vegan or vegetarian, but consider "Meatless Mondays" or abstaining whenever possible." .says teen vogue

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"Consume less meat. Eating less meat is a surefire way to lower your carbon footprint. Beef and lamb are large sources of methane, a notorious global warming gas. Consider this: a single pound of beef takes over 5,000 gallons of water to generate. You don’t have to go vegan or vegetarian, but consider "Meatless Mondays" or abstaining whenever possible." .says teen vogue

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One way to prevent climate change is to eat more vegetables 

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One way to prevent climate change is to eat more vegetables 

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In parts of the Arctic, entire forests are creeping northward. Luckily, ecologist Serge Payette is hot on their trail. Like the two other scientists we will meet here, Payette has spent decades trying to understand the often surprising ways plants influence their environment.

Together, these three experts are showing how plants don't just colonize new surroundings, but also can warm and clean them. Some plants can even rid an area of any competing plants, using chemicals that continue to marvel scientists. As work by these scientists shows, plants do many things to interact with their environment - and ours.
Move on up
Across the Arctic, temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else in the world. As that happens, the tree line that marks where forests stop and the treeless tundra starts has been shifting northward. Payette is an Arctic plant ecologist who works at Université Laval in Québec, Canada. And he's been studying how trees respond to this climate change in northern Canada.

Trees growing along the tree line must protect themselves from the cold wind. His research has shown that to do this, plants tend to grow horizontal limbs low to the ground. The energy it takes for trees to grow this way means they don't have enough left over to make seeds.

But as Earth's climate has been warming, trees no longer have to just grow horizontally. Many can instead grow up, toward the sky. This takes less energy. And with all that leftover energy, these trees have started producing more seeds. Payette has seen this happening especially in places where white spruce grow, such as northern Québec and Labrador.

"White spruce, which is a North American tree, is quite able to produce a lot of seeds, which can move long distances in the wind," explains Payette. When windblown seeds end up on the tundra beyond the tree line, they eventually can sprout new trees. This explains how a forest can move.

Université Laval ecologist Serge Payette studies how northern forests respond to rising temperatures - including by creating some warming of their own. Credit: Josée Pelletier

Of course, the process would work only if the tundra was warm enough. But in recent years, the whole planet has been warming - including the tundra.

Seeds also drop to the ground in the sparse forests already growing below the tree line. But no matter whether trees sprout in new locations below or above the tree line, they trigger two important things that can warm snowy surroundings even more.

First, the new trees will shield some snow, keeping the sun's rays from reflecting off of the white surface. Instead, the trees' dark green needles absorb the sun's heat. This warms them and the surrounding air. The extra warmth encourages even more trees to produce seeds. That further boosts a forest's ability to expand.

Second, more trees will trap more snow, preventing much of it from blowing away. While snow is cold, it also acts an insulator. Like a blanket, snow can trap heat in the soil below. Warming the soil also encourages tree growth.

In northern Québec and Labrador, temperatures have risen 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid-1990s. That rise has helped more trees grow past the tree line. And the more trees that grow, the warmer that region has become.

"The cold landscape that we are accustomed to in northern Canada will be a thing of the past," Payette predicts.

The speed at which trees are moving north is "not well-settled," he notes. But Payette says they are moving faster in North America than anywhere else. That's because trees that grow in other parts of the far northern hemisphere, such as birch in Scandinavia, are not as quick to produce seeds as are North America's white spruce.

Of course, warmer temperatures are bringing other changes to the far North too. Payette worries about impacts on the people and wildlife that depend on frozen conditions for food and shelter.

Right now, Payette also can't think of a job he'd rather do. "I'm very lucky," he says. "I'm doing something I love."
Indoors with the outdoors
Environmental scientist Bill Wolverton loves his work too. In fact, he surrounds himself with it day and night. Wolverton's Picayune, Miss., home - including his home office - is chock-full of plants.

His houseplants include rubber plants, snake plants, yucca plants, golden pothos and peace lilies. These common plants do some uncommon good: They cleanse the air of harmful chemicals. It's a benefit Wolverton has spent most of his career studying.

He got his start in the 1980s, working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA had worried that astronauts might spend months living in stuffy spacecraft. So it asked Wolverton to figure out if plants could make the air healthier for astronauts (and the rest of us) to breathe.

Retired NASA environmental scientist Bill Wolverton is never far from his work - the houseplants that fill his sunny home office. Wolverton is an expert in how plants can clean indoor air of sometimes dangerous contaminants. Credit: Wolverton Environmental Services

Scientists had long known plants can clean the air. Wolverton went a step further. He tested common houseplants to see which do it best. He also investigated how plants do it.

Wolverton focused on three common air pollutants: formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene. Carpets, furniture and computers are among the many household products that can emit these chemicals. Their levels can be two to five times higher indoors than outdoors. And that can be concerning because people spend as much as 90 percent of their time indoors.

These pollutants can cause breathing problems, headaches and fatigue. Research suggests that some of these chemicals might even cause cancer. Luckily, bringing a touch of the outdoors indoors can help.

Houseplant leaves absorb certain chemicals, including the common contaminants Wolverton chose to study. What's more, the leaves broke these pollutants down into harmless compounds. Plants with the biggest leaves proved best at this type of cleaning.

But plants also remove pollutants from the air as they transpire water - that is, exhale water from their leaves, he found. To do this, plants must first haul water up from their roots. In the process, air gets pulled down to the roots and soil. Any pollutants in the air will get sucked down there too. Once in the soil, these pollutants can be broken down into harmless substances by microbes.

Leaves that moved water most effectively cleaned air the best, Wolverton found - "such as the palms, golden pothos, rubber plants and the peace lily." For a standard-sized bedroom, he recommends growing at least two such plants, each about 30 to 60 centimeters (12 to 24 inches) high.

Though Wolverton is retired from NASA, he now runs a company that relies on the natural ability of plants to treat indoor air. He is also working on ways to make the process more efficient. This might include adding fans and replacing potting soil with special substances that boost plant growth.
Competitive environment
While some plants can break down harmful chemicals, others make them. These plants produce poisons to keep other plant species from invading their territory. This phenomenon is called allelopathy (ah LEE loh path ee).

"Allelopathy is basically chemical warfare for plants," explains Joseph Jez. The plant biologist works at Washington University in St. Louis.

Think of plants as chemical factories, he says. Some plants make chemicals to help themselves. The sweet scent of a rose? The mix of chemicals responsible for that aroma aids in reproduction. Other plants make chemicals to poison other plants. Walnut, pecan and hickory trees, for instance, all make a compound called juglone. Juglone can trigger other plant species to wilt and die. In fact, people sometimes use juglone as a natural weed killer.

Washington University plant biologist Joseph Jez turns the chemicals plants make into crystals. That allows Jez to better understand their three-dimensional structure. Credit: Washington University

Jez studies the proteins that control the amount of certain chemicals that plants make. In particular, he studies the shape of those proteins. It turns out that a protein's shape can affect whether a plant makes a lot of some protective chemical, a little, or none at all.

To view a protein's shape, Jez has to turn the material into a crystal. He then uses X-rays to probe the arrangement of its atoms. This creates a picture of the protein's structure in three dimensions.

Better understanding the shape of these proteins should offer clues to how they control chemicals.

"I try to understand nature's machinery and how it makes proteins," Jez says. "We're still at the very early stages, but if we can figure that out, we might be able to control it." Some researchers are studying how to build useful proteins in the test tube. Others are trying to understand how to help plants boost their production of these proteins.

For example, certain crops, such as sorghum and rice, naturally produce chemicals to fight off invading species. To a farmer, those potential invaders are weeds. Not all sorghum and rice plants can do this, however.

Understanding how certain varieties of important crops protect themselves by staging chemical warfare against invading species can help plant breeders. They can use what they learn to create new crop plants that more effectively fight weeds with little help from weed-killing chemical sprays.

Of course, plants also make chemicals for gentler purposes, such as attracting pollinators.

When temperatures rise, white spruce dedicate more energy to producing seeds, like these shown here. The shape of spruce seeds allows them to be carried long distances by the wind. That movement helps the trees colonize the tundra and push the tree line farther north. Credit: Steve Hurst at USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database

Pollinators, such as bees, carry powdery grains from one flower to another. When pollinators land on a flower, they drop some of those grains, called pollen. Pollen fertilizes the plant so that it can reproduce.

The lemon tree provides a good example of a plant that makes a chemical to attract pollinators. The limonene it makes has a lemony scent that pollinators - and people - like.

Limonene represents a gentler form of chemical warfare, says Jez. That's because the lemon tree is not trying to kill nearby plants. The tree instead is trying to ensure that it attracts more than its fair share of pollinators.

"It's about outcompeting the others," he explains.

The ability of plants to make chemicals fascinates Jez. However, what really thrills him is successfully turning some plant protein into a crystal. When he succeeds (and often it isn't easy), he can become the first person to ever witness the protein's structure - its skeleton.

Many more discoveries await Jez, as well as Payette, Wolverton and others. And they keep probing because they have a deep curiosity about how plants alter their environment. What they learn might ultimately help people speed those changes - or slow them down.

allelopathy A plant's production of chemicals that impair the growth and survival of other plant species.

climate change Long-term, significant change in the climate of Earth. It can happen naturally or in response to human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests.

ecologist A biologist who studies the relationships among living things and their environment.

transpiration A process in which plants carry moisture from their roots to their leaves, where it is then lost to the atmosphere as vapor.

microbe A microscopic organism.

tundra A large, treeless region in the far northern hemisphere where the subsoil is permanently frozen.

Word Find
(click here to enlarge puzzle for printing) This is one in a series on careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics made possible by support from the Northrop Grumman Foundation.

Sharon Oosthoek is a freelance science journalist. She likes to write about animals and their habitats. Sharon also really likes chocolate. Her sons have learned to hide their Halloween candy.

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In parts of the Arctic, entire forests are creeping northward. Luckily, ecologist Serge Payette is hot on their trail.

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6 Easy Ways to Fight Climate Change Every Day

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Climate change describes a change in the average conditions in a region over a long period of time.