Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1983, in the modern "global warming" sense.
Wiktionary
n. Changes in the Earth's climate, especially those said to be produced by global warming.
WordNet
n. a change in the world's climate [syn: global climate change]
Wikipedia
Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have also been identified as significant causes of recent climate change, often referred to as global warming.
Scientists actively work to understand past and future climate by using observations and theoretical models. A climate record—extending deep into the Earth's past—has been assembled, and continues to be built up, based on geological evidence from borehole temperature profiles, cores removed from deep accumulations of ice, floral and faunal records, glacial and periglacial processes, stable-isotope and other analyses of sediment layers, and records of past sea levels. More recent data are provided by the instrumental record. General circulation models, based on the physical sciences, are often used in theoretical approaches to match past climate data, make future projections, and link causes and effects in climate change.
Usage examples of "climate change".
The Vanutu lawsuit, which thank God you are backing, and the climate change conference that Nick has scheduled, and it’.
It might have cast a new light on the massive climate change that seems to have occurred in early Martian history.
They provide important tests of our use of computer models to predict future climate change.
To underline this, he produced a list stated as being of 2,500 scientists who had approved the 1996 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report preparing the ground for Kyoto.
I leave it to your imagination what such a pace of climate change would entail for most people.
But most scientists think that climate change results from variations in five different factors: the sun's output of radiant heat, the Earth's orbit, the composition of the atmosphere, the amount of dust produced by volcanoes, and levels of land and oceans resulting from movement of the Earth's crust.
She had left Russia just before its fortunes ascended on the double tide of resources and climate change.
It has become clear that the effects of climate change will be much worse than imagined a few decades ago: indeed, predictions of those effects from, say, the 1980s now look foolishly optimistic.
Many are friendly, but others are hostile to all outsiders, and even the weather and climate change.
They were the first culture ever, and also the first culture ever destroyed by a sudden climate change.