Climate change feedback

Imagine you have a cup of ice and you leave it on a table on a hot day. As the room gets warmer, the ice in the cup starts to melt. But, as it melts, it turns into water which is warmer than the ice. So the water starts to evaporate and create more heat in the room, which makes the ice in the cup melt even faster. This is called a feedback loop, where something happens and it causes more of the same thing to happen.

Now imagine the Earth is like that cup of ice. The Earth has a balance between things that cause it to warm up (like the sun) and things that cool it down (like the ocean and trees). But when we put too much greenhouse gases (like carbon dioxide) into the air, it causes the Earth to warm up more than it should. This is called climate change. And just like the ice in the cup, climate change causes feedback loops to happen.

One of the feedback loops is called melting permafrost. Permafrost is a layer of soil that's frozen all year long, even in summer. But when the Earth warms up because of climate change, this permafrost starts to melt. When it melts, it releases a lot of greenhouse gases that have been trapped inside for thousands of years. These gases cause even more warming, which makes more permafrost melt, and the cycle keeps going.

Another feedback loop is related to the ocean. When the Earth warms up, the ocean absorbs a lot of the extra heat. But when the ocean gets warmer, it melts more glaciers and ice caps, which cause sea levels to rise. Higher sea levels then cause more flooding and erosion, which makes it easier for more water to get into cities and towns. This causes more problems, which cause even more warming, which starts the cycle again.

Overall, climate change feedback loops are like a merry-go-round that keeps spinning and spinning faster when things happen that cause the Earth to warm up. It's important to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we produce to slow down the merry-go-round and reduce the impact of climate change.