Editing Climate variability and change (section)

== Terminology ==
''Climate variability'' is the term to describe variations in the mean state and other characteristics of climate (such as chances or possibility of extreme weather, etc.) "on all spatial and temporal scales beyond that of individual weather events."<!-- {{Sfn|IPCC AR5 WG1 Glossary|2013|p=1451}} puts page in [[:category:Harv and Sfn no-target errors]] --> Some of the variability does not appear to be caused by known systems and occurs at seemingly random times. Such variability is called ''random variability'' or ''noise''. On the other hand, periodic variability occurs relatively regularly and in distinct modes of variability or climate patterns.{{Sfn|Rohli|Vega|2018|p=274}}

The term ''climate change'' is often used to refer specifically to anthropogenic climate change. 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.<ref name="UNFCCC-1994">{{cite web |date=21 March 1994 |title=The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change |url=http://unfccc.int/resource/ccsites/zimbab/conven/text/art01.htm |quote=''Climate change'' means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. |access-date=9 October 2018 |archive-date=20 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220920173907/https://unfccc.int/resource/ccsites/zimbab/conven/text/art01.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> ''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 and everything else that increasing [[greenhouse gas]] levels affect.<ref name="NASA-2008">{{cite web |title=What's in a Name? Global Warming vs. Climate Change |publisher=NASA  |date=December 5, 2008 |url=http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html |access-date=23 July 2011 |archive-date=9 August 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100809221926/http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

A related term, ''climatic change'', was proposed by the [[World Meteorological Organization]] (WMO) in 1966 to encompass all forms of climatic variability on time-scales longer than 10 years, but regardless of cause. During the 1970s, the term climate change replaced climatic change to focus on anthropogenic causes, as it became clear that human activities had a potential to drastically alter the climate.<ref name="Hulme-2016"/> Climate change was incorporated in the title of the [[Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]] (IPCC) and the [[UN Framework Convention on Climate Change]] (UNFCCC). Climate change is now used as both a technical description of the process, as well as a noun used to describe the problem.<ref name="Hulme-2016">{{cite journal |last=Hulme |first=Mike |year=2016 |title=Concept of Climate Change, in: The International Encyclopedia of Geography |journal=The International Encyclopedia of Geography |page=1 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell/Association of American Geographers (AAG) |url=https://www.academia.edu/10358797 |access-date=16 May 2016 |archive-date=29 September 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220929201908/https://www.academia.edu/10358797 |url-status=live }}</ref>