2013 Weather Forecast: It’s still getting warmer
Quiz at the end of story- Try it!
Looking at this story in 2014? This is still very relevant- Enjoy more stories, pics and videos on environment here .
Do you like warm weather?
Many people do, unless they live right on the Equator (the middle section of the earth, where it’s quite hot all year round).
Warm weather means summer, and summer usually means fun! You can play in the sea or a pool or even just with a garden hose. You don’t shiver, and you don’t have to put on lots of extra clothing like coats, hats, mittens and sometimes boots!
But when the earth gets warmer and warmer every year, it’s not such a good thing. You might not feel the difference, especially because winter still feels cold.
But scientists who measure warmth every day are noticing that in the past 20 years, both summer AND winter are warmer than they used to be.
That’s why you might be hearing about something called “global warming” or “climate change”.
Now the weather scientists are saying that 2013 is going to be warmer yet again.
This means that 2013 will be one of the warmest years ever, since they started writing down temperatures.
So what was the Earth like thousands of years ago?
Before you were born, the world was a little chillier. But it had been that way for thousands of years, so that’s how our earth, its plants and its animals have all learned how to live – in weather that’s a little cooler than it is now. Some people think that the earth is getting warmer because that’s the way it works.
Were the dinosaurs wiped out during the Ice Age? No one knows for sure.
One example is the Ice Age, when the whole earth got very cold for a long time. Some people think that the Ice Age is what killed all the dinosaurs, although no one knows for sure. What we do know is that it took the earth thousands or even millions of years to turn into a big snowball.
But scientists say our temperature is changing a lot faster than it did in the Ice Age. As a matter of fact, the hottest years in history have all happened in YOUR lifetime, since 2001! That’s fast!
These scientists say that we humans are to blame because our cars and planes and factories put way too much carbon into the air. Cars and planes and factories have only been on our earth for about 100 years, and that’s what’s changing the earth’s balance so quickly.
Yes, it might seem like the earth getting warmer is better than the earth getting colder. But either change makes it hard for animals and plants to survive.
And when the earth gets warmer, the ice at the top and the bottom melts.
Have you ever watched an ice cube melt? Did you notice that it slowly turned into water and made a pool? Like pouring water into a glass, the more the ice melts, the higher our sea level goes, and more storms we get.
So, even though our warming earth probably won’t change your life tomorrow, it looks like life will be different in another 10, 20, 50 or 100 years.
Polar bear featured image: U.S. Geological Survey;Dinosaur image: epSos.de; Earth's equator: Wikimedia Commons; Factory smoke: Bob Jagendorf
