What is Climate Change?

The Earth’s climate is constantly changing. During its lifetime our planet has been through several ice ages. Ice ages feature a cycle of glacial and interglacial periods. The last glacial period ended over 10,000 years ago and we are now in an interglacial period known as the Holocene.

The natural process of climate change is a slow one allowing sufficient time for species to relocate to more suitable climates, adapt to new conditions or evolve. However, the increase in greenhouse gas levels caused by human activity since the Industrial Revolution means that scientists agree climate change is now happening much more quickly. Rather than over centuries and millennia we are starting to see changes within our lifetimes.