How much do you know about climate change and global warming?

Understanding Climate Change and Global Warming

• Climate and weather are two different concepts, with weather referring to short-term atmospheric conditions and climate referring to long-term regional or global temperature, humidity, and rainfall patterns.
• Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth's surface 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.
• Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth's local, regional, and global climates, driven by human activities and natural processes.
• Human activities are estimated to have increased Earth's global average temperature by about 1 degree Celsius since the pre-industrial period, a number that is currently increasing by more than 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade.
• The current warming trend is unequivocally the result of human activity since the 1950s and is proceeding at an unprecedented rate over millennia.
• Scientists use observations from the ground, air, and space, along with computer models, to monitor and study past, present, and future climate change.
• Climate data records provide evidence of climate change key indicators, such as global land and ocean temperature increases, rising sea levels, and ice loss at Earth's poles and in mountain glaciers.
• Climate change also causes frequency and severity changes in extreme weather such as hurricanes, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, and precipitation, and cloud and vegetation cover changes.
• Natural processes, which have been overwhelmed by human activities, can also contribute to climate change, including internal variability and external forcings.
• NASA's Global Climate Change website provides a high-level overview of some of the known causes, effects, and indications of global climate change, along with graphs and animated time series showing real-time climate change data.
• Other NASA resources include the Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio, the Sea Level Change Portal, and NASA's Earth Observatory, which provides satellite imagery, feature articles, and scientific information about Earth's climate and environmental change.
• Climate change and global warming are urgent issues that require immediate action from individuals, governments, and organizations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate their impact on the planet.

Test your knowledge on one of the most pressing issues of our time - climate change and global warming. This quiz will challenge you to differentiate between climate and weather, understand the causes and effects of human activity on global warming, and recognize the indicators of climate change. You'll also learn about NASA's resources for studying and monitoring climate change. Take this quiz and see how much you know about this urgent issue that affects us all.