What is climate?

Submitted by cochran.442 on
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what-is-climate
Answer

Weather is the state of the atmosphere. Commonly reported conditions such as air temperature, humidity, precipitation and wind speed/direction change rapidly over short distances and time. Climate often refers to longer-term averages (of a month or more) of the weather and considers those values over time. 

Think of walking your dog who is driven by the desire to eat, play with another dog, or visit a fire hydrant. At any point in time, your dog could be moving in a different direction than you, but most often your dog is limited in distance from you by the leash. 

Over the course of your walk, you and the dog generally take a similar path, but the trace of your dog’s path is seemingly chaotic. We can think of the dog as the weather and you as the climate. We describe the mean path of the dog (weather) by your path (climate), even though at a given time the two may vary. View the video below for an illustration of this explanation from the UCAR Center for Science Education. 

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