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What is climate change?
Climate change refers to any significant change in measures of climate (such as temperature, precipitation, or wind) lasting for an extended period (decades or longer). Climate change may result from natural factors, such as changes in the sun's intensity or slow changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun or natural processes within the climate system (e.g. changes in ocean circulation).1
But the climate changes that we are seeing and experiencing today are almost entirely caused by one important factor:
Human activities that change the atmosphere's composition (e.g. through burning fossil fuels, industrial production, etc...) These human activities increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which keeps more heat in our atmosphere, facilitating global warming.
The way global warming will affect the weather will be different from region to region. Weather patterns and systems are very complicated so an increase of 2 or 3 degrees in the average temperature of the earth will not result in equal changes to weather patterns around the world.
Places near the equator won't see large changes in temperature, but places like the Arctic Ocean and Antartica will become a lot warmer than normal. This will end up melting enormous quantities of ice and cause world ocean levels to rise, creating flooding in many costal areas (about 60% of the world's population live not far from a shoreline). Apart from this, places that are already dry will become even more so (because of the increased heat) and so deserts like the Sahara will grow and take over place where people used to be able to live.
1http://epa.gov/climatechange/basicinfo.html
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