climate change

noun

: significant and long-lasting change in the earth's climate and weather patterns

The half-tonne … turtles were thought to have died out 30,000 to 40,000 years ago because of climate change.

—New Scientist

especially, in current use : such change associated with global warming

Concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change are renewed among scientists and the public with every new report about the possibility of melting icecaps and rising temperatures.

—Randy Showstack

Drought is a paleontological fact in the American West, but the latest desiccations have a new signature, and my region's climatologists, hydrologists, foresters, and water managers are nearly unanimous in their conviction that what we are seeing now is climate change, the anthropogenic kind, a consequence of too much CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

—Kenneth Brower

Examples of climate change in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

And climate change is going to make snake bites much more likely, recent research suggests. —Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Scientific American, 15 Mar. 2026

Her art blends societal issues, such as overconsumption and climate change, with knowledge of art historical content. —Heide Janssen, Oc Register, 15 Mar. 2026

In an agricultural region battered by urbanization, climate change, and unjust occupation, the director chronicles a man’s desperate fight to preserve centuries-old ways of living. —Matthew Carey, Deadline, 15 Mar. 2026

Meanwhile, climate change is slowing regrowth, and timber volumes (thus logging jobs) have fallen six-fold in just a decade. —Evan Mills, Mercury News, 15 Mar. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1854, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for climate change

• arrange
• derange
• estrange
• exchange
• midrange
• grange
• mange
• range
• strange
• interchange
• rearrange

Kids Definition

climate change

noun

: significant and long-lasting change in the earth's climate and weather patterns

especially : such change associated with global warming