Somewhere in a small town in Minnesota...

... there lived a 5th-grade girl named Jamie who came home from school one day with a very big and very important question for her mom.

Welcome home sweetie! 

How was your day at school today?

Hi mom! Hi dad! Today was a great day! Oh, but I have got one big question to ask you. It has to do with something my teacher mentioned in class today.

She told us to go home and ask our parents about...

... the greenhouse effect!

Gasp! 

The Greenhouse Effect?!?

What is wrong with the greenhouse effect? Isn't a greenhouse for plants and flowers?

Not exactly. However, that is where the name comes from! You see sweetie...

Greenhouses are made of glass. During the day, the sun shines and warms up all of the little plants inside, plus the air too!

Then, at night when it is cold outside, the glass traps that heat inside, keeping all of the plants warm, happy, and healthy! Greenhouses even work in the coldest of winters, so long as the sun shines!

Woah, cool! That sounds awesome though... so what is so bad about this greenhouse effect?

Well sweetie, as your mom said, this concept has nothing to do with a greenhouse. It is about Earth and something called climate change.

Oh, I know about this one! My teacher talked about it in class today before asking us to go home and ask our parents about the greenhouse effect. Now I get why she told us to ask you about this!

So, climate is like weather, but it tells us about things like temperature and rainfall over a long time instead of over a short time like weather reports do, and climate reports on one specific place. Climate change tells us about the change in these weather conditions over that same but still long time. Did I get it right?

That is right, sweetie!

And while Earth's climate is always changing, it has been changing dangerously in the last 100 years due to human activities causing an unnatural rise in climate temperatures.