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

Imagine how that comes across to a president who wouldn’t admit to climate change if his putter melted in his hands or Mar-a-Lago became a swim-up hotel. — Steve Lopez, Los Angeles Times, 11 July 2026

The major drivers of extinction, in this view, are climate change and habitat destruction, both of which harm food webs, pollination, disease control, and climate resilience in the ecosystem. — Taylor Dotson, Scientific American, 10 July 2026

In August last year, a study by World Weather Attribution said climate change that has driven scorching temperatures and dwindling rainfall made massive wildfires in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus burn much more fiercely that summer. — ABC News, 10 July 2026

At a time when the future of cocoa is being tested by climate change, deforestation and persistent poverty, the sector faces a reckoning no single company can answer alone. — Santiago Gowland, Forbes.com, 10 July 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