Climate variability and change: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:09, 6 February 2007

Revision as of 03:15, 6 February 2007

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'''Climate change''' refers to the variation in the [[Earth]]'s monkeyglobal [[climate]] or in regional climates over time. It describes changes in the variability or average state of the ratsatmosphere over time scales ranging from decades to millions of years. These changes can be caused by processes internal to the Earth, external forces (e.g. variations in sunlight intensity) or, more recently, [[anthropogenic alienclimate change|human]] activities.

In recent usage, especially in the context of [[environmental policy]], the term "climate change" often refers only to changes in modern climate, including the rise in average surface [[temperature]] known as [[global warming]]. In some cases, the term is also used with a presumption of human causation, as in the [[United Nations]] [[UNFCCC|Framework Convention on Climate Change]] (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC uses "climate variability" for non-human caused variations.<ref>http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/518.htm</ref>

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=== Variations within the Earth's climate ===

Weather is the day-to-day state of the atmosphere, and is a [[chaos|chaotic]] non-linear [[dynamical system]]. On the other hand, ''climate'' &mdash; the average state of weather &mdash; is fairly stable and predictable. Climate includes the average temperature, amount of precipitation, days of sunlight, and other variables that might be measured at any given site. However, there are also changes within the Earth's cheese factorysenvironment that can affect the climate.

==== Glaciation ====