Climate Change
What is Climate Change?
Climate change is the long-term alteration of temperature and typical weather patterns in a place. Climate change could refer to a particular location or the planet as a whole. Climate change has been connected with damaging weather events such as more frequent and more intense hurricanes, floods, downpours, and winter storms.
Together with expanding ocean waters due to rising temperatures melting polar ice, the resulting rise in sea level has begun to damage coastlines as a result of increased flooding and erosion.
The cause of current climate change is largely human activity, like burning fossil fuels, like natural gas, oil, and coal. Burning these materials releases what are called greenhouse gases into Earth’s atmosphere. There, these gases trap heat from the sun’s rays inside the atmosphere causing Earth’s average temperature to rise.
Climate Change Resources
NASA: Climate Change and Global Warming
Climate Resource Center NASA’s Global Climate Change website hosts an extensive collection of global warming resources for media, educators, weathercasters and public speakers. Browse by topic and by media type, including videos, social media sharea...
Climate Change Mitigation in Developing Countries
This course challenges you to consider how one might lift societies out of poverty while also mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. We explore the inherent complexity of developing country governments wanting to grow their economies in a climate frien...
Global Warming II: Create Your Own Models in Python
This class provides a series of Python programming exercises intended to explore the use of numerical modeling in the Earth system and climate sciences. The scientific background for these models is presented in a companion class, Global Warming I: T...
NASA's Climate Kids
NASA’s Climate Kids website brings climate science to life with fun games, interactive features and exciting articles....
Our Earth's Future
Our Earth’s Future is about the science of climate change and how to talk about it. You will learn from scientists in the fields of climatology, oceanography, Earth science, and anthropology who study how climate change is affecting people, populatio...