what is climate change? The word climate means the average weather conditions over a number of years, including temperature, wind, and, rainfall. when we talk about climate change, we mean the unusual changes in the Earth's weather patterns that have happened over the last 100 years. It is true that the weater is always changing, and sometimes the weather changes in ways we really do not expect for example, we might have a warm, sunny day in middle of winter, or a cold, windy day in the middle of summer. Recording the temperatures of each day helps us find the average temperature for the whole year. Doing this in many different parts of the world lets us find the average global temperature. When all temperatures are taken together one would expect and ups and downs in the year to cancel each other out, and the average temperature to stay roughly the same from one year to the next. However, scientists have found that the temperature is not staying the same sand our planet is actually getting warmer each year. This is called global warming, and it is a major part of climate change Extreme changes in climate are nothing new on Earth. In its long history. there have been times when the Earth's climate become warmer, causing ice to meet and sea levels to raise , so that much more of our planet was covered in winter. At other times the Earth has been very cold; these ice ages saw huge areas of the planet covered in snow and ice. These might sound like drastic changes in the Earth's climate, but they happened very gradually over thousands of years.