CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate is the long-term average of a region’s weather events. The Earth’s climate is not static. Over the billions of years of earth’s existence, it has changed many times in response to natural causes like sun spot, ice age glaciations, etc.

“Climate change” means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

However, when today people talk about ‘climate change’, they mean the changes in climate over the last 100 years which is caused predominantly by human activity.

The phrase ‘climate change’ represents a change in the long-term weather patterns. Climate change is not a change of weather in a particular day; it is the cumulative change of long term weather pattern i.e. changes in climate. For example, it’s possible that a winter day in Jammu, could be sunny and mild, but the average weather, the climate, tells us that Jammu’s winters will mainly be cold and include snow and rain. The change in the pattern of Jammu’s winters from the normal winter pattern represents an epitome of climate change.

Climate change is the measurable effects of the continual warming trend. Climate change is usually measured in major shifts in temperature, rainfall, snow, and wind patterns lasting decades or more.

Humans are creating climate change by burning large amounts of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), deforestation (when forests are cut down or burned, they can no longer store carbon, and the carbon is released to the atmosphere).