Climate Changeexplained, not guessed.
A warming planet leaves real evidence behind — rising temperatures, melting ice, shifting seasons. Students uncover what's really happening and what happens next.
This side covers how global warming actually works, why it's happening, and where things are headed. It's the heaviest side on the cube — but it's important to say this upfront: none of this is out of our control. Climate change is happening because of decisions people and industries made, which means people and industries can change it. One quick distinction: global warming refers to the rise in Earth's average temperature caused by greenhouse gases. Climate change is the bigger term for everything that warming causes — stronger storms, rising seas, shifting seasons, and more. Global warming is the cause. Climate change is what it does.
CO2 Traps Heat
The sun sends energy to Earth as light. That light passes through the atmosphere, warms the surface, and then tries to escape back into space as heat. Greenhouse gases like CO2 act like a blanket around the planet, catching some of that heat before it can leave. Burning coal, oil, and gas has loaded the atmosphere with far more CO2 than it held before, trapping more heat than the planet can handle.
Over 1.3°C Hotter Already
"Pre-industrial" means before large-scale fossil fuel burning began in the mid-1800s. Since that baseline, Earth has warmed more than 1.3°C on average — and some regions have warmed much more. The Paris Agreement set 1.5°C and 2°C as thresholds countries are trying to stay under, because the gap between those numbers is the gap between a hard future and a much worse one.
Hottest Decade on Record
Reliable global temperature records only go back to the late 1800s. Weather is what's happening outside today; climate is the pattern across decades. The last ten years are the hottest decade in recorded history, a trend that keeps accelerating — Los Angeles felt this during recent summers, when records broke across the region for days at a time.
Melting Ice Raises Sea Levels
Arctic sea ice is already floating in the ocean, so when it melts, sea levels barely change — same as a melting ice cube doesn't overflow your glass. What raises sea levels is land ice: glaciers and ice sheets sitting on land in places like Antarctica and Greenland. Global warming is why both are melting faster than ever recorded.
Heat Fuels Wildfires and Floods
Warmer air holds more moisture. Between rain events, it pulls moisture out of plants and soil faster, drying them out and creating wildfire conditions — exactly what Southern California has been experiencing. But when rain does come, it comes harder and faster, overwhelming drainage systems and causing floods.
The Arctic Is Warming Fastest
The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the global average. Ice and snow are highly reflective — they bounce sunlight back into space. As warming melts that ice, it exposes darker ocean water and land, which absorbs heat instead of reflecting it, which causes more warming, which melts more ice.
Warming Spreads Mosquito Diseases
Mosquitoes and ticks can only survive and reproduce in warm enough temperatures. As temperatures rise, the regions where they can live year-round are expanding into higher elevations and latitudes. Mosquitoes carry malaria, dengue fever, Zika, and West Nile virus; ticks carry Lyme disease.
Thawing Permafrost Releases Trapped Methane
Permafrost has stayed frozen for thousands of years, locking in roughly 1,500 gigatons of ancient carbon — about twice what's in the entire atmosphere today. As Arctic warming thaws that ground, the buried material decomposes and releases CO2 and methane, which cause more warming, which thaws more permafrost.
Every fraction of a degree we keep off the thermometer has real positive effects. The 1.5°C and 2°C lines aren't arbitrary — they're where bad becomes much worse. What's on this page is already happening, but we are not locked into the worst outcomes. The next five sides of this cube are about why.