What's the Difference Between Global Warming and Climate Change?

Before proceeding further, there's another bit of terminology that we probably should clear up. The difference between climate and weather. Weather is the short-term state of the atmosphere in a specific corner of the world. Humidity, temperature, wind speed, atmospheric pressure and visibility are all factors that help dictate the weather at a particular moment in time.

In other words, weather doesn't last very long. It unfolds over the course of days, hours or even minutes. Therefore, it's liable to change quickly — which is why so many of us yearn for constant updates. Whenever you ask if your hometown is "supposed to get any rain" on a given day, you're inquiring about the weather.

Don't confuse weather with climate. The latter is far broader in scope. Basically, climate reflects an area's long-term weather averages and trends. Those are often established by decades (at least) of meticulous observation. Given the difference in scale, it makes sense that the climate is much slower to change than the weather.

And yet changes do occur. Averaged together, all the world's regional climates form what scientists know as the "global climate." This is liable to evolve and fluctuate over time — as are its regional components.

By the broadest definition, climate change includes any and all long-term fluctuations in one or more climate-related variables — such as average rainfall — within the same location. Note that this applies to both regional climates and the global climate itself. So let's say northern Europe saw a dramatic spike in rainstorms and the trend continued for decades on end. That hypothetical scenario would count as an example of regional climate change, no matter what happened elsewhere in the world.

On the other hand, global warming is — well, global. More to the point, global warming refers to an increase in Earth's surface temperature. And every day, that global surface temperature increases. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that between the years 1880 and 2016, the average surface temperature on our home planet jumped to the tune of 1.71 degrees Fahrenheit (0.95 degrees Celsius).

Mind you, this is nothing to sneeze at. A planet-wide temperature shift of only a few degrees can have enormous ramifications. Fifteen thousand years ago, in a geologically-recent ice age, our world was only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit cooler (5 degrees Celsius) than it is today. And yet, that temperature was enough to keep almost a third of the planet's surface blanketed in ice.

Ah, but we're getting off-track. The main takeaway here is that global warming is a form of climate change — but climate change doesn't always manifest itself as global warming.

Strange as it may sound, the recent warming caused by our greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide may be provoking an increase in both flooding and droughts. While certain areas across the globe now receive enhanced precipitation, soils in some dryer parts of the world stand to lose a great deal of moisture.

To learn more, we reached out to Dr. Nathan Steiger. An atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, Steiger studies the effects that variations in Earth's climate have had — and still have — on human civilizations. "Historically, societies were impacted most by the same kinds of disruptive climate events that occur today: prolonged and extreme heat and cold, droughts and floods," he says via email.

"Often these climate changes in the past simply happened to people due to no fault of their own ... But sometimes these disruptive climate extremes were made worse by human mismanagement of their environments." He points to agriculture-driven soil erosion as an example of the latter. "Areas that lose thick, rich soils are more susceptible to drying out during droughts, thus making the droughts even worse than they would have been."

In 2019, Steiger co-authored a comprehensive study which appeared in the journal, Nature. Using ice cores, coral samples, historical records and other lines of evidence, his team reviewed the history of climate shifts — large and small — over the past two millennia. During that swath of time, there were a number of aberrant periods, including the unusually hot "Medieval Climate Anomaly" which lasted from 800 to 1200 CE.

Most of these events were regional in nature. Yet, Steiger and his colleagues found that for 98 percent of the planet, the single hottest period during the last 2,000 years was the late 20th century, when global temperatures were absolutely soaring. Given the carbon emissions we were releasing and the fossil fuels we were burning, it's no surprise that Earth's climate system was in such a state.

Over 20 centuries of human history, our forebears never had to withstand any climate-related phenomenon that was as universally impactful as modern-day climate change. So, how will we address our rising sea levels and melting glaciers? How can we sustain plant life and water supplies when we're faced with greater ice loss and excess heat?

The Paris agreement, which was signed by almost 200 nations, aims to limit the rise of global temperatures. At present, it's unclear whether the near global agreement will result in dramatic drops of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases. However, it's a positive sign that many countries are acknowledging that human activity is a leading cause of temperature change in Earth's atmosphere.

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.