Climate Change Unit
6 modules covering the evidence for a changing climate, its natural and human causes, its impacts, and how the world can respond — built for the 2027 cambridge igcse syllabus
Your route through the unit.
Start anywhere — M1 is the gentlest way in.Module 1
Evidence of Climate Change
How do we KNOW the climate is changing? Temperature records, ice cores, sea ice, glacier retreat, and historic writings and paintings — and how the independent lines of evidence converge.
Module 2
Natural Causes of Climate Change
The climate swung for 800,000 years without us — what did it? Milankovitch cycles, sunspots and volcanic cooling, and why every natural suspect has an alibi for the last 50 years.
Module 3
The Human Influence
Nature has an alibi, so who is warming the planet? The enhanced greenhouse effect, the three human causes — fossil fuels, deforestation and agriculture — the gases and sectors behind them, and the forensic evidence that the extra carbon is ours.
Module 4
Impacts of Climate Change
What does a warmer world actually do? The two separate ways the sea is rising, the chain reaction that runs from warming through ecosystems to people, and why the damage — and the handful of gains — fall so unevenly.
Module 5
Managing Climate Change
What can actually be done? Mitigation tackles the causes and adaptation copes with the effects, at four scales from one person to nearly 200 countries — and every strategy is judged on cost, scale, speed, effectiveness, sustainability and fairness.
Module 6
Climate Change in Iceland
The Detailed Specific Example. Iceland runs on renewable electricity yet emits more per person than the world average, and feels climate change faster than almost anywhere — glaciers, coasts, fisheries and farms are all changing. Its responses are world-leading but rest on geology few countries share, so the module ends in a judged decision rather than a right answer.