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Core concepts
What is climate?
Climate is the long-term average pattern of weather conditions in a place—typically described over decades—with statistics for temperature, humidity, wind, and other atmospheric variables.
Are weather and climate different?
Yes, but they are linked. Weather describes short-term local conditions (cloudy today, sunny tomorrow). Climate describes longer-term averages—for example a 30‑year summary. Deserts tend to be hot and dry; polar regions tend to be cold and dry.
What is global climate change?
It refers to shifts in average surface temperature and broader climate patterns driven mainly by human emissions of greenhouse gases (water vapour, CO2, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and industrial gases) that strengthen the natural greenhouse effect beyond its historical balance.
What is the greenhouse effect?
The Sun floods Earth with enormous energy. Land and oceans absorb part of it as heat; greenhouse gases trap another part in the atmosphere rather than letting it escape to space—like a planetary blanket. Without this effect, average temperatures would not support life as we know it; adding more gases thickens the blanket.
What is climate change (UNFCCC definition)?
Under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, “climate change” means change of climate attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere, in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable periods.
How is global warming different from climate change?
Global warming is the increase in Earth’s average temperature. Climate change is the wider set of shifts that follow: sea-level rise, glacier loss, shifting rainfall, more frequent or intense extreme events, shifting seasons, changing crop yields, and more.
What is a heat wave?
Authorities often issue a heat-wave warning when unusually hot, humid conditions persist for at least several days. Extremely high temperatures well above normal—for example more than about 6 °C above average—may be called severe heat waves depending on national criteria.
What is an urban heat island?
City centres are often several degrees warmer than surrounding countryside because paved surfaces, sparse vegetation, traffic, waste heat, canyon-like street geometry, and pollutants change how solar energy is absorbed and released. This can intensify air-quality issues and cooling demand.
What do the 1.5 °C and 2 °C guardrails mean?
Science underscored that holding warming near 1.5 °C relative to pre‑industrial levels avoids many high-risk impacts. Passing 2 °C greatly increases the likelihood of severe, hard-to-reverse damage. The international community therefore seeks to stay “well below” 2 °C and pursue 1.5 °C pathways.
What is the Paris Agreement?
The Paris Agreement (2015) is the latest global climate treaty under the UNFCCC. Parties aim to limit temperature rise preferably to 1.5 °C and submit nationally determined contributions (NDCs) outlining their mitigation plans, while strengthening adaptation, finance, transparency, and stakeholder engagement.
What are emissions and mitigation?
Emissions are releases of gases or particles into the air. Mitigation means human actions that reduce greenhouse-gas sources or enhance removals (sinks), measured in tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Practical mitigation mixes cuts in fossil use, efficiency, renewables, and protecting or restoring ecosystems.
What is the carbon cycle?
Carbon moves continuously among atmosphere, land, oceans, and living organisms. Plants and oceans absorb atmospheric CO2; decomposition and combustion return it. Humans have disrupted this cycle by emitting fossil carbon faster than sinks can absorb, raising atmospheric concentrations and warming the planet.
What are sinks and why do they matter?
A sink removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere—for example intact forests or healthy coastal ecosystems that store carbon. Damage to sinks releases stored carbon and weakens mitigation potential, threatening both climate stability and biodiversity.
What is carbon capture and storage?
CCS technologies capture CO2, usually from large point sources such as power plants or industry, compress it, and inject it deep underground into geologically suitable formations. Costs and safeguards for groundwater and seismic safety remain important deployment challenges.
What is carbon pollution?
It loosely describes excess fossil CO2 piled into the atmosphere beyond what natural sinks can handle. Carbon dioxide itself is vital to photosynthesis—but too much thickens the heat-trapping blanket, driving dangerous warming from coal, oil, and gas combustion.
What is carbon offsetting?
Offsetting buys verified credits representing emission reductions or removals elsewhere to balance emissions from an activity or organisation—as a complement to direct cuts, not a substitute for deep decarbonisation.
What is the global carbon budget?
It is the total amount of CO2 humanity can emit while maintaining a chosen warming limit with a specified probability—essentially drawing a shrinking allowance against cumulative emissions since industrialisation to keep risk tolerable.
What is a green economy?
A pathway that rewires economic activity for low-emission, resource-efficient, inclusive development—centering the phase-out of fossil dependency and redirecting finance from stranded subsidies toward clean jobs and resilient infrastructure.
What is low-carbon development?
It seeks economic growth while bending the emissions curve downward—prioritising clean energy and efficiency in power, buildings, mobility, waste, forestry, agriculture, and cross-cutting governance for measurable climate outcomes.
What is a carbon tax?
An explicit price on fossil carbon reflecting social and environmental costs—raising revenues that can recycle into efficiency programmes, renewables, rebates, or public transport while steering markets away from high-carbon commodities.
What are carbon markets?
Platforms where emission-reduction credits trade. Mandatory schemes cap overall emissions and allocate allowances; voluntary markets let companies or cities purchase credits beyond compliance mandates. Robust integrity, monitoring, and co-benefit safeguards are crucial.
What is carbon finance?
Investment and payment flows that explicitly fund mitigation projects—from renewable plants to methane capture—with returns or credits indexed to tonnes of avoided or removed greenhouse gases since Kyoto-era market foundations.
What are emissions-trading schemes?
Cap-and-trade regimes limit total pollution while letting participants trade allowances so cuts happen where cheapest—linking disparate regions if monitoring and governance harmonise—for example swapping surplus reductions for compliance elsewhere.
What is the EU Emissions Trading System?
Launching in 2005, EU ETS is a major carbon market placing emissions caps on power stations, refineries, energy-intensive factories, aviation (phased scopes), incentivising cheapest abatement first across tens of thousands of installations.
What does adaptation mean?
Adaptation is anticipating observed or expected impacts and adjusting practices, infrastructure, ecosystems, or policies to moderate harm or seize benefits—often combining engineered, nature-based, and institutional measures from drought‑tolerant crops to upgraded stormwater networks.
What is resilience?
The capacity of people, ecosystems, or cities to withstand shocks—heat, floods, price spikes—and reorganise positively without losing core functions, looping learning and equitable participation into preparedness.
What is a low-carbon city?
An urban area integrating clean mobility, renewable supply, circular waste, greenery, participatory planning, and risk-aware zoning so emissions fall while coping capacity against climate extremes rises—with ecological connectivity preserved.
What is rainwater harvesting?
Capturing roof or surface runoff into tanks or soils to buffer municipal supply, replenish shallow aquifers, and reduce urban flooding—as IPCC synthesis reports often catalogue under pragmatic adaptation portfolios for water-stressed settlements.
What is urban resilience?
Framed in agendas such as the New Urban Agenda, it pairs inclusive prosperity with infrastructures that tolerate compound stresses—climate, finance, demographic—so redevelopment reduces rather than reinforces vulnerability pockets.
What is urban green infrastructure?
A networked mix of parks, street trees, bioswales, wetlands, riversides, green roofs, and connected habitats that slows runoff, cleans air, cools neighbourhoods, shelters biodiversity, and cuts pressure on grey storm drains.
What is a sponge city?
A sponge city absorbs, stores, and slowly releases rainfall through porous pavements, rain gardens, swales, cisterns, and restored soils—mirroring natural hydrology—reducing inundation risks and heat extremes while bolstering groundwater recharge amid shifting storms.