People often use “climate change” and “global warming” as if they mean the same thing. They are closely linked, but they are not identical. So what is the difference between climate change and global warming? In short: global warming is the long-term rise in Earth’s average surface temperature, and climate change is the bigger picture, which includes that warming and all the other changes that come with it.
| Global warming | Climate change | |
|---|---|---|
| What it describes | The rise in Earth’s average surface temperature | All long-term changes in climate, including temperature, rainfall, ice, sea level and extreme weather |
| How broad | One specific measure | The whole picture |
| Relationship | One part of climate change, and a driver of many other changes | Includes global warming and its effects |
Weather and climate
It helps to start with an even more common mix-up: weather versus climate. Weather is what is happening in the atmosphere right now, or over the next few days: today’s rain, tomorrow’s heat. Climate is the long-term average of weather in a place, usually measured over 30 years or more. One cold winter does not change the climate, any more than one hot day proves it is warming. Climate change is about shifts in those long-term averages.
Is climate change the same as global warming?
Not quite. Global warming describes one thing: the average surface temperature of the planet going up, mainly because of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide released by burning coal, oil and gas. Climate change is the wider set of changes that a warming planet brings, including rising sea levels, melting glaciers and ice sheets, shifting rainfall patterns, longer fire seasons and more intense heavy rain. As NASA puts it, global warming refers to surface temperature increases, while climate change includes global warming and everything else that rising greenhouse gas levels will affect, as its explainer What’s in a Name? sets out. So global warming is a cause of many of the changes, not a symptom of them. Climate change can also describe natural changes, such as the ice ages, while “global warming” today almost always refers to the current human-driven warming.
Was “global warming” renamed “climate change”?
No, although it is a common claim. Both terms have been in use side by side for decades. “Global warming” was popularised by a 1975 paper in the journal Science by geochemist Wallace Broecker, titled “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”, which, neatly, used both ideas in its title, as NASA notes. The phrase had appeared in scientific writing even earlier, at least as far back as 1961, according to Skeptical Science. A scientific journal called Climatic Change launched in 1977, and an influential 1979 report for the US National Academy of Sciences used “global warming” for surface temperatures and “climate change” for everything else. When the United Nations set up its expert body in 1988, it chose the name Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientists today tend to prefer “climate change” simply because it is the more complete description, NASA explains, but the two terms have always existed together.
What has changed in Australia
The difference between the terms becomes clearer when you look at the measurements. According to the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO’s State of the Climate 2024 report, Australia has warmed on average by 1.51°C over land since national records began in 1910, and eight of the nine warmest years on record have occurred since 2013. That temperature rise is the global warming part. The climate change part is everything that comes with it, which the same report describes: drier conditions in parts of the country, longer fire seasons, more intense heavy rainfall, and rising seas, with global average sea level up by about 22 cm since 1900. Not everywhere is warming at the same rate, either; Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory have warmed faster than the national average, according to the report’s authors writing for 360info.
Two names, one connected story
So global warming is the rise in temperature, and climate change is the whole set of changes that comes with it. One is a part of the other. Using them interchangeably in everyday conversation is understandable, but knowing the difference helps make sense of news reports and weather records. It also explains why a cold snap does not disprove a warming trend: weather is what happens this week, and climate is the long-term pattern. For a look at how much slower, natural changes have reshaped the planet over millions of years, see Zealandia, the lost continent hidden under the Pacific, and for how warming may be bringing two bear species into contact, see pizzly bears.
Sources
- NASA: What’s in a name? Global warming vs climate change
- CSIRO: State of the Climate 2024
- 360info: Six charts show the state of play for the climate
- Skeptical Science: Was Broecker really the first to use the term global warming?