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Human activities can also impose forcings, for example, through changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Radiative forcing is a measure of how various factors alter the energy balance of planet Earth. [12] A positive radiative forcing will lead towards a warming of the surface and, over time, the climate system.
In the 1980s, the terms global warming and climate change became more common, often being used interchangeably. [29] [30] [31] Scientifically, global warming refers only to increased surface warming, while climate change describes both global warming and its effects on Earth's climate system, such as precipitation changes. [28]
Climate (from Ancient Greek κλίμα 'inclination') is commonly defined as the weather averaged over a long period. [9] The standard averaging period is 30 years, [10] but other periods may be used depending on the purpose. Climate also includes statistics other than the average, such as the magnitudes of day-to-day or year-to-year variations.
Anthropogenic climate change is caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes. [3] Global warming became the dominant popular term in 1988, but within scientific journals global warming refers to surface temperature increases while climate change includes global warming ...
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 human climate niche is the ensemble of climate conditions that have sustained human life and human activities, like agriculture, on the globe for the last millennia. . The human climate niche is estimated by calculating the human population density with respect to mean annual temperat
Climate activists are engaged in a range of activities around the world that seek to ameliorate these issues or prevent them from happening. [163] The effects of climate change vary in timing and location. Up until now the Arctic has warmed faster than most other regions due to climate change feedbacks. [164]
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).