global warming

Meaning

Noun

• A sustained increase in the average temperature of the Earth, sufficient to cause climate change.

Origin

• First attested in the 1950s. Came into common use in the mid-1970s with Wallace Smith Broecker's paper “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?”{{cite-journal
• |lang=en
• |author=Wallace S. Broecker
• |authorlink=Wallace Smith Broecker
• |title=Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?
• |work=Science
• |date=1975-08-08
• |issue=4201
• |volume=189
• and Mikhail Budyko's statement in 1976 that “a global warming up has started”.