What is climate change? Curious kids ask the Met Office

To start off, what is climate change?

Climate change is the way that our world is getting warmer because greenhouse gases have gone into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and methane, trap sunlight as it comes into the Earth’s atmosphere. As the sunlight bounces off the Earth’s surface, it gets trapped inside our atmosphere which warms up our planet.

So, why does it matter?

Climate change is going to change the way our world works. We’ll have warmer, wetter, winters and hotter, drier summers for the UK and Wales. It might not seem like a huge change, but wetter winters will mean there’s more risk of flooding and we’ll have difficulties sowing crops to grow food. Hotter summers could mean droughts where we struggle to water our crops.

Climate change will affect everyone across the whole world, but it’ll affect people differently depending on where they are. So, it matters because some changes could be so severe that people have to move from their homes, change their jobs or the time of day they work.

What’s the difference between the weather and the climate?

To explain this, we like to compare the weather and climate to our wardrobes.

The weather is what we see every day, and that determines what clothes you put on. So, on a hot, sunny day you’ll wear shorts and t-shirt but, on a cold and rainy day you might wear a big thick coat. What determines which clothes you have in your wardrobe in the first place, or what you expect the weather to be like, is the climate. Weather is what you get, and climate is what you expect. We look at average observations over many years to tell us the climate we expect, but what we see every day is the weather.

How do you know when thunder and lightning is coming?

Thunderstorms happen because of a process called convection. When the energy from the sun hits the ground, it causes moisture to rise up very quickly. That rapid speed as it goes up creates the thunder clouds you see. But that can be happening on a very, very small scale. Because the rising air is unstable, our computers find it hard to predict exactly where in an area the storms might happen when the scale is so small. So, if we give a warning to north Wales, not everyone there will get a storm but there's a chance that some areas will.

We love sport, will climate change affect us getting out and playing sport?

Climate change is already impacting sport here and around the world. Pitches are getting waterlogged and flooded by rain in the winter from grassroots all the way up to professional clubs. Then in the summer some athletes are suffering with heatstroke because it’s too warm.

How can the Met Office help us with climate change?

We help everyone in the UK, and work with people across the world to look at the climate to help us understand what’s actually happening right now.

We also use our large computers to look at weather changes for the UK and around the world. We bring that information together so we can see what the climate looks like in the future. We try to share as much information with other scientists as possible so they can make decisions. Then we can all tackle climate change together.

Can we do anything to stop climate change?

Yes we can by reducing how much greenhouse gas we release. If we do that across the whole world, we can definitely slow climate change down. Whether it’s governments, countries or people like us, we can all make a difference to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas and the effects of climate change.

Want to know more?

For children, find out more about climate change here.

For grown ups, find out more from Dr James Pope on the impact of rising temperatures.

Inspired to take action?

Start by learning more about how your everyday choices, how you travel, use energy and food choices can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

You can also get a tailored list of actions to get started with My Green Choices.