The Science

Beginner

Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas is changing our climate and warming our planet.

It’s simple: the more carbon pollution in the air, the more the sun’s energy gets trapped as heat. Which means things keep getting hotter. In fact, the world has already gotten nearly 1°C warmer since 1880.

Warmer temperatures have real consequences for all of us—not just for polar bears. Sea levels around the world have risen nearly 20cm since 1901, swallowing entire islands and creeping closer to populated areas of great coastal cities like New York, Melbourne, and Dakar.

Plus, extreme weather events like bushfires, hurricanes, floods, and droughts are becoming more frequent and intense, events which we in Australia are increasingly vulnerable to.

Courtesy the Climate Reality Project

Intermediate

Head over to NASA to learn about the scientific causes, effects and solutions to climate change, along with further reading and resources.

Want to learn more about Australia-specific climate science, impacts and solutions? Check out the latest research reports from Australia’s leading climate change communications organisation, the Climate Council.

Advanced

Ready to go full throttle? We recommend reading the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special AR6 report addressing the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science, and combining multiple lines of evidence from paleoclimate, observations, process understanding, and global and regional climate simulations.