Global climate change

{
  "id": "MLC-T-ENV-012346",
  "term": "Global climate change",
  "field": "Environment",
  "term_source": "Global Climate Change",
  "definition": "1. Alteration of temperature and precipitation patterns throughout the world.\n\n2. Global climate change could result in sea level rises, changes to patterns of precipitation, increased variability in the weather, and a variety of other consequences. These changes threaten our health, agriculture, water resources, forests, wildlife, and coastal areas. For more information on the science and impacts of global climate change, visit EPA's Global Warming Web site.\n\n3. The long-term fluctuations in temperature, precipitation, wind, and all other aspects of the Earth's climate. External processes, such as solar-irradiance variations, variations of the Earth's orbital parameters (eccentricity, precession, and inclination), lithosphere motions, and volcanic activity, are factors in climatic variation. Internal variations of the climate system also produce fluctuations of sufficient magnitude and variability to explain observed climate change through the feedback processes interrelating the components of the climate system.\n\n4. Changes in the global environment that may alter the capacity of the Earth to sustain life. Global change encompasses climate change, but it also includes other critical drivers of environmental change that may interact with climate change, such as land use change, the alteration of the water cycle, changes in biogeochemical cycles, and biodiversity loss.\n\n5. 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: (1) Natural factors, such as changes in the sun's intensity or slow changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun. (2) Natural processes within the climate system (e.g., changes in ocean circulation). (3) Human activities that change the atmosphere's composition (e.g., through burning fossil fuels) and the land surface (e.g., deforestation, reforestation, urbanization, desertification).",
  "subject": "Sustainability and green living",
  "see_also": [
    "Climate Change"
  ],
  "references": [
    "Nearshore Terrestrial Ecosystems Glossary",
    "Clean Energy Glossary",
    "NOAA Climate Program Office Glossary",
    "EPA EV-Environmental Events-Climate Change",
    "Green Power Markets Glossary"
  ],
  "url": "https://mlchart.com/terminology/environment/global-climate-change/"
}