Hot Questions about Climate Change

a little more about . . .

what happened to global warming

We study climate globally over decades, centuries, and millenia. But people live locally, and our memories don't last quite so long.

• If the road you drive to work is free of traffic one morning, that doesn't mean your city's traffic problems have gone away. So while you might have a cool summer or a really cold blizzard where you live, you might not hear about the heat wave half a world away. When we add up and take the average of all the observations of air and ocean temperatures around the world over time, there's a clear warming trend.
  
  
• Even in a warming world, there will still be cold and warm periods. But overall we can expect more unusually high temperatures. Climate change is like loading the dice: the odds are being shifted to more warmer days and nights.

<< back to Hot Questions