Climate change is a substantial and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods of time ranging from decades to millions of years. It might be a change in the average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions. Climate change is a result of factors that include oceanic processes, biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received buy Earth, volcanic eruptions, and plate tectonics, and human induced alterations of the natural world; these latter effects are presently causing global warming, and the term “climate change” is frequently used to describe human-specific impacts.
Image Caption: Satellite image of ship tracks, clouds created by the exhaust of ship smokestacks. Credit: NASA/Wikipedia
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