As you may have noticed recently, the weather goes from 40 degrees and sunny to freezing and snowing. Usually, winters are long and cold and filled with snow. However, this has been changing for the past couple of years. This is mainly due to climate change.

A lot of people, mix up climate change and global warming. Both of these have an effect on the environment and people. Global warming has more to do with the weather. It’s mostly short-term and affects people locally. This quote from NASA goes more into detail, “Weather refers to atmospheric conditions that occur locally over short periods of time—from minutes to hours or days.” Some examples would be rain and snow.

Climate change, on the other hand, is more about long-term effects that affect people globally. NASA describes climate saying, “[It]  refers to the long-term regional or even the global average of temperature, humidity and rainfall patterns over seasons, years or decades.” According to NASA 97% of scientists agree on climate change and believe it is affecting us.

The effects of these are both widespread and have already been seen around the world. Climate change is the cause of rising sea levels. UCSUSA (Union of Concerned Scientists USA) says that the sea level has already risen eight inches since 1880. Due to the rising sea levels, military bases on the coast have been flooding. This increase in temperature is also causing a longer Spring, which in turn is causing more ice to melt.  Wildfires are also affected—the rising temperatures create more intense fires.  The heightened temperatures are even stirring up problems underwater as coral reefs have begun to die due to the increase in water temperature.

According to NASA, “Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come, largely due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities.”

The intergovernmental panel on climate change predicts a temperature rise of 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. However, these negative effects can be stopped. It starts with cutting back on everyday life.