Humans have long observed and tracked the weather, looking for patterns that would give insight into what was to come. We found that certain weather conditions and situations repeated themselves, and, over time, we learned what to expect from the weather. However, when the climate — the set of weather conditions that prevail in an area over long periods of time — changes, we cannot expect previously observed weather norms to be reliable.
The climate is definitely changing. According to scientists at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies,1 “The average global temperature on earth has increased by about 0.8 degrees C (1.4 degrees F) since 1880.” That may not sound like much, but a drop of a degree or two was enough to send the world into the so-called Little Ice Age from 1650 to 1850. And the rate of warming is increasing: “Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15 to 0….
