Climate change is one of the major challenges of our time and adds considerable stress to our societies and

to the environment. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Without drastic action today, adapting to these impacts in the future will be more difficult and costly.
Definitions of climate change
Climate change in IPCC usage refers to a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. It refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. This usage differs from that in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where climate change refers to a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.
But before going to climate change, we have to understand what is climate and what factor determine it. Climate is traditionally defined as the description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant atmospheric variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind. Climate can thus be viewed as a synthesis or aggregate of weather. This implies that the portrayal of the climate in a particular region must contain an analysis of mean conditions, of the seasonal cycle, of the probability of extremes such as severe frost and storms, etc. Following the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), 30 years is the classical period for performing the statistics used to define climate. This definition of the climate as representative of conditions over several decades should, of course, not mask the fact that climate can change rapidly. Nevertheless, a substantial time interval is needed to observe a difference in climate between any two periods. In general, the less the difference between the two periods, the longer is the time needed to be able to identify with

confidence any changes in the climate between them.{Goosse H., P.Y. Barriat, W. Lefebvre, M.F. Loutre and V. Zunz (2010)}. Climate is thus now more and more frequently defined in a wider sense as the statistical description of the climate system. This includes the analysis of the behaviour of its five major components: the atmosphere (the gaseous envelope surrounding the Earth), the hydrosphere (liquid water, i.e. ocean, lakes, underground water, etc), the cryosphere (solid water, i.e. sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, etc), the land surface and the biosphere (all the living organisms), and of the interactions between them (IPCC 2007, Fig. 1.1).