You must have heard about in weather forecasts that it is going to be sunny, rainy or it will snow today and you plan your days accordingly. And there has been a lot of talk in the past decade about climate change all over the world. However, there is still a lot of confusion between climate and weather.

As per NASA, “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.” 

In summary, climate is what you expect and weather is what you get.

When to go outside what you see on any day, for example, it may be sunny (30°C) or it may be cloudy with snow (may be 0°C), this is weather. While, Climate is the average of weather. For example, in January in the Northern Hemisphere you expect to be cold while in July you expect to be hot.

When you hear in news something like this, “today we hit a record high for this day” for example in the recent heatwave across EUROPE, it means that a climate record is broken and the temperature is very high compared to the average temperature.

So, when somebody talks about climate change, it means changes in long-term averages of daily weather. And because of rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions the rate at which climate is changing has increased at unprecedented rate, remember it is never too late to make sustainable lifestyle changes. 

Every small action counts. 

References:

1. oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/weather_climate.html

Image – australianenvironmentaleducation.com.au/education-resources/climate-vs-weather/