Climate change means the variation in the Earth's global climate or in regional climates over time.

It describes changes in the state of the atmosphere over time scales ranging from decades to millions of years. These changes can be caused by processes internal to the Earth, forces from outside (e.g. variations in sunlight intensity) or, more recently, human activities.

Climate change is any long-term significant change in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region (or, more relevantly to contemporary socio-political concerns, of the Earth as a whole) over an appropriately significant period of time. Climate change reflects abnormal variations to the expected climate within the Earth's atmosphere and subsequent effects on other parts of the Earth, such as in the ice caps over durations ranging from decades to millions of years.

In recent usage, especially in the context of environmental policy, climate change usually refers to changes in modern climate (global warming**). For information on temperature measurements over various periods, and the data sources available, see temperature record. For attribution of climate change over the past century, see attribution of recent climate change.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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**Global warming is a term having to do with the slow increase of the Earth's temperature. Global warming may become a problem for the world and has already been linked to floods and other types of storms.