climate

Etymology

From Middle English climat, from Old French climat, from Latin clima, from Ancient Greek κλίμα (klíma, “latitude”, literally “inclination”).

noun

1. The long-term manifestations of weather and other atmospheric conditions in a given area or country, now usually represented by the statistical summary of its weather conditions during a period long enough to ensure that representative values are obtained (generally 30 years).
   And the effects from climate change are already extreme. File:And the effects from climate change are already extreme.ogg 2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns
2. (figurative) The context in general of a particular political, moral, etc., situation.
   Industries that require a lot of fossil fuels are unlikely to be popular in the current political climate.
   In polling by the Pew Research Center in November 2008, fully half the respondents thought the two parties would cooperate more in the coming year, versus only 36 percent who thought the climate would grow more adversarial. November 7, 2012, Matt Bai, “Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds”, in New York Times
   This isn't the time for militant unionism. If I were at ScotRail, in the current climate I'd trade a pay freeze [sic: pay rise?] for job security. December 2 2020, Philip Haigh, “A winter of discontent caused by threat of union action”, in Rail, page 63
3. (nonstandard) Clipping of climate change.
   And the needs are going up because we’ve been smitten by the war in Ukraine, by COVID, by climate. And I fear that 2023 is going to be an acceleration of all those trends. 2022-12-01, Martin Griffiths, “Press conference on the launch of the 2023 Global Humanitarian Overview …”, in ReliefWeb (transcript), archived from the original on 2022-12-01
4. (obsolete) An area of the earth's surface between two parallels of latitude.
5. (obsolete) A region of the Earth.

verb

1. (poetic, obsolete) To dwell.