Quote:
Originally Posted by troutman
NASA - What's the Difference Between Weather and Climate?
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/n...e_weather.html
The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere "behaves" over relatively long periods of time.
An easy way to remember the difference is that climate is what you expect, like a very hot summer, and weather is what you get, like a hot day with pop-up thunderstorms.
In short, climate is the description of the long-term pattern of weather in a particular area.
Some scientists define climate as the average weather for a particular region and time period, usually taken over 30-years. It's really an average pattern of weather for a particular region.
Data over 40 years would speak to climate.
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Something seems weird about that then. I quite often watch the news in the evening and they always talk about record high and low temperatures for Calgary, at least in passing. So if the planet is getting significantly hotter, wouldn't we expect those records to be very recent? Instead, from a purely anecdotal perspective, these temperature records all seem to be from decades ago. And I know; the response is "that's weather you fool" and I'm fine with that. (Some times you have to dumb this down for a guy in finance!) But then this guy effectively tracks the weather for 40 years and it's climate. I just think there is a blurring of the lines here at some point.