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This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 24 December 2024. Long-term weather pattern of a region For other uses, see Climate (disambiguation). Atmospheric sciences Atmospheric physics Atmospheric dynamics category Atmospheric chemistry category Meteorology Weather category portal Tropical cyclone category Climatology Climate category Climate ...
The climate system will vary in response to changes in forcings. [15] The climate system will show internal variability both in the presence and absence of forcings imposed on it. This internal variability is a result of complex interactions between components of the climate system, such as the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean. [16]
Factors that can shape climate are called climate forcings or "forcing mechanisms". [9] These include processes such as variations in solar radiation, variations in the Earth's orbit, variations in the albedo or reflectivity of the continents, atmosphere, and oceans, mountain-building and continental drift and changes in greenhouse gas ...
Climate change can also be used more broadly to include changes to the climate that have happened throughout Earth's history. [32] Global warming—used as early as 1975 [33] —became the more popular term after NASA climate scientist James Hansen used it in his 1988 testimony in the U.S. Senate. [34] Since the 2000s, climate change has ...
Various factors affect the average state of the atmosphere at a particular location. For instance, midlatitudes will have a pronounced seasonal cycle of temperature whereas tropical regions show little variation of temperature over a year. [20] Another major variable of climate is continentality: the distance to major water bodies such as oceans.
The five components of the climate system all interact. They are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. [1]: 1451 Earth's climate system is a complex system with five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things).
Worryingly, some scientists believe that climate change could produce a more “curvy” jet stream, which would lead to more instances of back-to-back disasters like the U.S. is experiencing now ...
However, the Earth's eccentricity is so small (at least at present) that the variation in solar irradiation is a minor factor in seasonal climate variation, compared to axial tilt and even compared to the relative ease of heating the larger land masses of the northern hemisphere.