Keyword Greenhouse gases

The most powerful computers on Earth are used to run climate models. Scientists use these models to understand how Earth’s climate works and to make predictions about how it might change in the future.

Weather records from across Canada show that every year since 1998—that’s 20 years ago now—has been warmer than the 20th century average [1]. This means that a whole generation of Canadians has never experienced what most of modern history considered a “normal” Canadian climate. But it’s not just Canada, of course. The whole planet is getting warmer.

Earth’s atmosphere is made up of many different gases, some of which are “greenhouse” gases. They are called that because they effectively act like a greenhouse or a layer of insulation for Earth: they trap heat and warm the planet. For the past couple of hundred years, human activities (such as burning coal to generate electricity and fuelling our vehicles with gas and diesel) have been changing the atmosphere by adding a huge volume of greenhouse gases. This has caused the greenhouse effect to become stronger, and is making the planet warmer.