Climate Change

By: Khadija Nadeem Grade 8
The weather change day to day—sometimes it rains, other days it’s hot. Climate is the pattern of weather conditions over a long period of time for a large area. And climate can be affected by Earth’s atmosphere.
Our Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere made up of gases. When sunlight enters our atmosphere, some of the sun’s heat is trapped by the gas and some bounces back out into space. By trapping that heat, our atmosphere keeps Earth warm enough to live on. Without it, our planet would be very cold. Earth’s climate has always naturally cycled through change, caused by how much of the sun’s energy was absorbed by the atmosphere.
But during the past few hundred years, oil, gas, and coal have powered homes, cars, and factories. These energy sources release a gas called carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This gas traps heat that would otherwise escape Earth’s atmosphere. This increases Earth’s temperature, which contributes to the planet’s warming. The Earth’s average temperature has increased about -17°C in the past hundred years. Scientists think that the temperature increase has caused melting glaciers, drought, and coral reef die-off.
But climate change affects more than temperature. Because of this change of temperature, some places will receive more rainfall, which could lead to flooding, while other places will get less, which might mean drought. Tropical storms could be stronger, and a continuing rise in sea level due to melting polar ice might push people out of their homes.