CLIMATE - CHANGE OR VARIATION

Several definitions of climate change, climate variation and related terms are reviewed here. It is concluded that incompatible definitions produce considerable differences in the actual usage of the terms depending on context and author. While this, perhaps, is not a problem within the scientific community, it is argued that difficulties may arise when climatological information is interpreted by non-specialists, for example, in a political or socio-economic context. The problem may be caused by inadvertent misinterpretations or even deliberate distortion of the terms by parties with vested interests. Within a scientific context a relative time-scale is usually preferred, while an absolute time-scale is more relevant for practical applications. To promote further discussions, this assumption and some other basic objectives are used to suggest a framework for how climatological terms can be defined and used in a way that is internally consistent, as well as consistent with current usage as far as possible.