What is Global Warming?

The Covid-19 pandemic has uprooted and changed much of society; however, the threat of global warming remains.

Holly Neal from the Create Education Project explains the difference between global warming and climate change and how the Create Education Project will help students to understand more about their impact.

What is Global Warming?
Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s climate system observed since the pre-industrial period due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere. 
While Global Warming is often used interchangeably with climate change, the latter refers to both human- and naturally produced warming and the effects it has on our planet.
 
United Nations have described Climate Change as the defining issue of our time.
With the World Health Organisation stating Climate Change as impacting human lives and health in a variety of ways.
 
But what is Climate Change?
The Earth’s temperature is around 15C. There are natural fluctuations in the climate, but scientists say temperatures are now rising faster than at many other times in the past.
Human activities have increased emissions of carbon dioxide, rising up temperatures. Extreme weather events (such as the latest in a string of continents on fire) and melting polar ice caps are among possible side effects.
 
What is the difference between weather and climate?
“Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get”
While the weather refers to atmospheric conditions that occur locally over short periods of time—from minutes to hours or days. Such as include winds, rain, clouds, thunderstorms or floods.
Climate refers to the long-term regional or global average of weather for a certain place. We usually define climate as being the 30-year average.
Royal Meteorological Society and the World Meteorological Organisation, along with many other scientists have observed the world is about one degree Celsius warmer than before widespread industrialisation.
The 20 warmest years on record all occurred in the past 22 years, the years 2015-2018 accounting for the top four.
 
Climate change champions, Sir David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg have been calling increasing attention to this pressing issue. Without drastic action today, adapting to these impacts in the future will not only be too difficult and costly but too late.
 
The CREATE Education Project, specialists in 3D printing and the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS), the leading independent expert in weather and climate, have today (6th October 2020) released their 3D Printing the Weather Project.
This engaging project has been designed for ages 11 – 16 in geography and PSHE, with data on average monthly temperature dating back from January 1659 to December 2018. These resources will allow students to make tactile, engaging models of the Central England Temperature record. The models in turn can be used to look at past weather and climate, and at how the climate of the UK has been changing over time.
The purpose of the project is to help students understand and explore the weather, climate, extreme weather and climate change in a visual way and to empower children to be a part of the solution. 
To access the resources and learn more about this unique project, please visit RMetS Education Website MetLink here: https://www.metlink.org/3d-print-the-weather/

The author

Holly Neal

Holly is Marketing Executive at CREATE Education. As a former Architecture and Environmental Design student, she is passionate about sustainable technologies, their ability to facilitate efficient designs and create less waste. She loves seeing 3D printing and Industry 4.0 technologies potential to inspire the next generation of innovators through STEAM, to change the world - particularly alleviating our impact on the environment.

https://www.createeducation.com/