Lots of people today are talking about climate change, but what exactly is it?
Well, climate is the average weather for an area over a long time. Climate change means that there is a long-term change in the weather of an area.
Over the past 100 years, there has been a big increase in temperatures around the world. This climate change is known as global warming and one of the effects is that the sea level is rising as the polar ice caps melt.
Rising sea level
Would you have guessed that average sea level around the world has risen by 10-25cm over the past 100 years?
Melting icebergs in Patagonia, South America
All the ice and glaciers in the world are melting much faster because the temperature on Earth is increasing. Some scientists believe that it could rise by another 50cm in the next 100 years. This is bad news for lots of small islands around the world that may loose coastal land. Some very small islands may even disappear.