• Weather refers to atmospheric conditions that

occur locally over short periods of time—from

minutes to hours or days. Familiar examples include
rain, snow, clouds, winds, floods or thunderstorms.
• Climate, on the other hand, refers to the long-term
regional or even global average of temperature,
humidity and rainfall patterns over seasons, years or
decades.
• “Global warming” refers to the long-term warming of the planet.
Global temperature shows a well-documented rise since the early
20th century and most notably since the late 1970s. Worldwide,
since 1880 the average surface temperature has risen about 1 °C
(about 2 °F), relative to the mid-20th-century baseline (of 1951-
1980). This is on top of about an additional 0.15 °C of warming from
between 1750 and 1880.
• “Climate change” encompasses global warming, but refers to the
broader range of changes that are happening to our planet. These
include rising sea levels; shrinking mountain glaciers; accelerating ice
melt in Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic; and shifts in
flower/plant blooming times. These are all consequences of the
warming, which is caused mainly by people burning fossil fuels and
putting out heat-trapping gases into the air. The terms “global
warming” and “climate change” are sometimes used
interchangeably, but strictly they refer to slightly different things.
•
Global warming refers only to the Earth’s rising
surface temperature, while climate change includes
warming and the “side effects” of warming—like
melting glaciers, heavier rainstorms, or more
frequent drought. Said another way, global warming
is one symptom of the much larger problem of
human-caused climate change.
• Another distinction between global warming and climate
change is that when scientists or public leaders talk
about global warming these days, they almost always
mean human-caused warming—warming due to the
rapid increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases from people burning coal, oil, and gas.
• Climate change, on the other hand, can mean human-
caused changes or natural ones, such as ice ages.
Besides burning fossil fuels, humans can cause climate
changes by emitting aerosol pollution—the tiny particles
that reflect sunlight and cool the climate— into the
atmosphere, or by transforming the Earth's landscape,
for instance, from carbon-storing forests to farmland.