Global warming refers to the fact that overall there is greater amounts of heat trapped in our Earth system than before and overall , the planet is warming however , that does not mean the weather in all locations is warming , this is why we often refer to it as climate change . In fact , global warming will lead some places to cool down . Climate change , or global warming if you ' d like , is responsible for a much greater flux in all conditions precipitation , temperatures , etc . so our heat waves are hotter and longer and winters can also be breaking record lows . Wet years will be wetter and dry years will be drier . SourceI ' m a meteorologist who studied under 3 professors in college 1 was my counselor where I took multiple of their classes on climate change and are members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , which Al Gore used for his movie when he received his Nobel Prize . Also , my senior thesis was over how precipitation patterns in the midwest have changed since 1900 .