Glossary
Words you will actually use.
- Weather
- What you meet today: rain, heat, wind. One afternoon is not the climate.
- Climate
- The pattern of weather over decades. The IPCC compares periods such as 1850–1900 and 2011–2020.
- Greenhouse effect
- Gases let sunlight in and slow the escape of heat. Carbon dioxide is the largest human addition since pre-industrial times.
- El Niño
- A Pacific pattern. The central and eastern equatorial Pacific is warmer at the surface than usual. It can shift the Indian monsoon. NOAA describes the state of it. The India Meteorological Department describes the monsoon season.
- La Niña
- The other swing. That same stretch of Pacific is cooler than usual.
- Urban heat island
- A city that stays warmer than the countryside around it, because roads and roofs hold heat.
- CO2e
- Carbon dioxide equivalent. Other gases restated as the carbon dioxide that would warm the air by a similar amount over a named period. The period has to be stated.
- Carbon footprint
- A total of greenhouse gases linked to a person, product, or organisation. Climact shows an estimate only when a published factor is on the methodology page.
- Carbon neutral
- Additions of greenhouse gases are balanced by removals, inside a boundary and a year.
- Net zero
- Leftover emissions are matched by removals. India's stated national aim is net zero by 2070.
- Carbon negative
- Removals are greater than additions. It is a stricter claim than net zero, and it still needs a boundary and a year.
- Offsets
- A reduction or removal counted outside the activity, then used to balance it.
- Reductions
- Emitting less from the activity itself.
- Scope 1
- Greenhouse gases from sources an organisation burns or controls directly.
- Scope 2
- Greenhouse gases from energy it buys, such as grid electricity.
- Scope 3
- The rest of the chain: purchased goods, travel, waste, use of what it sells.
- Sustainability
- Meeting needs now without taking that ability from the future. The UN still uses this line from the 1987 Brundtland report.
- ESG
- Environmental, social, and governance. A grouping some investors use. It is not a substitute for the IPCC.
- Mitigation
- Cutting greenhouse gases, or removing them.
- Adaptation
- Living with impacts that are already here: heat plans, drainage, warnings.
- Paris Agreement
- The 2015 UN climate agreement. It aims to hold warming well below 2°C and to pursue 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
- SDG 13
- The UN goal on climate action: resilience, climate in national policy, and education. Climact takes its name from that goal.