Climate is What You Expect, Weather is What You Get: One Minute Video Illustrates the Difference

From Bryan Merchant at Treehugger and Philip Bump: this one-minute video simply illustrates the difference between climate (trend) and weather (variation).

From the WWW site:

Weather is not climate. Climate is not weather.

Despite the insistance of some to the contrary (here's looking at you, Fox News), who claim, for instance, that a bout of cold, snowy weather is somehow in direct contradiction to global warming, climate describes the long term trends in temperature, rainfall, wind, etc. Weather is what's happening outside your window.

Or, if that explanation seems too lengthy, there's always this (see Philip Bump diagram) video:

 

The climate is a dog walker. The weather is his less predictable dog. It's about as simple and elegant as a way to describe trend and variation – a la climate and weather – as there is.

Forward this video to that special person in your life who snorts at any mention of climate change when it happens to be  -75˚ outside.

Only one quote will do today:

"Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get." - Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love (1973) [Like almost everything else, I've heard this attributed to Mark Twain.]

Comments

[Michael 'Aquadoc' Campana]

You're welcome, Steve. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

So sorry for your loss.

[Steve Gough]

What a wonderful video; thanks for posting this!