What is the difference between weather and climate change and how do we differentiate the two?
Ok so I know this will seem like a troll question but I am serious.
I understand climate change is long term and weather is the now. However the two are appear to be intimately related. Both skeptics and proponents use this argument regularly. The one that has always bugged me is that any extreme weather is used as proof of AGW hot or cold which makes no sense. If weather patterns are inconsequential for proponents why continue to use short term data for conclusions. If we continue to produce colder than normal winters how does this support the Proponents? Furthermore if summer and annual temperatures continue to climb how does this support Skeptics?
By the way I believe we affect the environment and need to do better. I believe strongly that we need to end this oil/coal addiction and move to cleaner sources of energy. I So on one hand I am a proponent.
I am against Pigovian Taxes to remedy externalities that are not completely understood and those funds being distributed to god only knows where. I have also seen outrageous claims by proponents that will almost surely never be realized. So on the other hand I am a skeptic
2010-12-07T10:17:16Z
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Joe thank you for your well thought out response.
I would contend that a carbon tax is a Pigovian tax that is on the table. Cap and trade, Greenhouse Emission however you want to label it. If not a Pigovian tax then what is it?
As far as what that has to do with science nothing. I find the science is the part of the issue that is most interesting.
However its seems that a large political movement has been married to the AGW issue willingly or not.
It can move one such as myself that accepts the validity of the scientific argument toward the center based on the political argument.
I hope that clarifies my position.
?2010-12-07T09:50:29Z
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Weather is short term events that can be be anything from temperature during a specific hour, daily max/min temps, a day of clear skies, or a week long cold snap. You are right though that climate is closely connected to weather. Climate is the culmination of many weather events for a period of time. You can’t neatly define weather as a 24 hours period or climate as needing to be a 30 years or more. It’s fairly relative, and that’s how both sides can confuse and misuse the terms when it comes to regular people talking about it. The people who actually work within the science have a firm understanding of the difference, but that often gets distorted when their results are translated to the public either by their own misunderstandings on the topic, or by intentional manipulation by someone with an agenda.
Because climate is basically the summed and average effect of many weather events, a single weather event can be used as evidence towards the climate trend. That doesn’t mean a single weather event defines the climate though. Instead, you add that one point to many others where each point influences the outcome of determining the climate. There is no clear distinction between short term data and long term. It’s simply data. When you and track it for a week, or even a year, it’s still short term in the topic of climate and weather. However, many of those short term observations combined then become long term observations which then can be used to describe the general climate rather than just the weather for a day or year.
When people mention that the weather is X out today and that proves/ disproves global warming, they are incorrect. Proponents (and opponents) that are familiar with the science to not make that mistake. Usually it’s only news anchors, talk show hosts, etc. without much background that make those comments. Instead the weather on that day is supporting evidence towards determining the climate. Does a hotter than normal day support climate warming? Yes, but that one day is only one small piece of the climate picture. You need to look at many of those pieces to gain a clearer picture of the actual climate. Then that is only the climate for the one area you looked at. At that point you need to consider we’re looking at global warming. In some areas the climate may actually get colder, but overall, most areas would be warming. It’s the average temperature of all these areas combined that is increasing under global warming.
You do highlight a major issue in the topic though. The science is sound, but people easily get confused, or don’t take the time to learn the terminology and the truth gets muddled by the media and word of mouth unless you’re actually in a circle of people with scientific understanding specifically about climate. Many posts you see from non-scientists whether it’s an opponent or proponent are pretty evident of this misunderstanding. Usually that comes from only scratching the surface of understanding the topic rather than investigating it.
As a rough rule of thumb a climate is determined by taking the mean weather conditions over a period of 30 years or more. Many climate records are updated on a monthly basis and as such, last month’s weather will now be incorporated into the climatic record, this means that the current climate is determined by both very recent weather and historic weather as well and is therefore dynamic and constantly changing. For arguments sake let’s say that December was an unusually cold month, when the December data are incorporated into the climatic record the effect will be to reduce the overall average global temperature. But, because there will be at least 359 other months worth of data, the effect is going to be very small indeed. If it were that climates were determined by just ten years worth of data then the difference that a single month could have would be multiplied three-fold. In determining whether the climate is changing we need to compare recent conditions with a static baseline from history. Different baselines are used but generally they’re either 1951 to 1980 or 1961 to 1990. If there’s a difference between the current climate and the baseline then we can determine that the climate is changing. What we deem to be the current climate is constantly changing, if we’re going to determine if the climate is indeed changing we need to use fixed reference points and so monthly or annual means over a 30 or more year period will be used, from this it will be established if there are any discernible trends. In this respect, a generic definition of climate is going to give you something that is continually being revised but for analytical or statistical purposes it’s something that is represented by a series of numbers. Even something over such a long time-scale as the Milankovitch cycle influences are always going to affect the weather first. Then as the weather becomes incorporated into the climatic data, the cyclical influence becomes more apparent in the climate record. The same is true for the short term cycles and one-off events.
Climate is "The general or average weather conditions of a certain region, including temperature, rainfall, and wind. On Earth, climate is most affected by latitude, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the movements of the Earth's wind belts, the difference in temperatures of land and sea, and topography. Human activity, especially relating to actions relating to the depletion of the ozone layer, is also an important factor.
I would also also point out the huge impact that ocean currents and phenomena have upon the global weather patterns. I do not believe 30, or even 50, year cycles qualify as climate for we are talking about longterm conditions. If we only use the last 30 years as a norm for comparison are we not rigging the entire comparative process? Values must continue to reflect historical data for as far back as we reliably have it.
I am a proponent that we will soon be moving into a 30-50 year cooling phase in our overall climatic cycle. I prefer to wait and see as opposed to throwing out wild assumptions that we are quickly approaching a "tipping point" in global warming. Besides which, this alleged tipping point could just as easily trigger another ice age as create global deserts.
I disagree to some extent with the answers provided so far. Like you, I struggle with the term "climate change". Many have said weather is what happens in 24 hours... I disagree. For the sake of the argument, I will base my understanding on where I live, in Australia, in a temperate zone. We have 4 distinct seasons. The WEATHER in each season is predictable. Spring is mild, Summer is hot. Winter is cold, Autumn(Fall) is mild. So I say the weather in Summer is hot...for a period of 3 months, not 24 hours. Certainly, some days are hotter than others. A fraction of a degree in temperature rise has made no discernible difference to the weather. The climate has not changed. If we start getting snow in Summer and heatwaves in Winter, then yes we have climate change.
There are actually three terms that mean different things: Weather, Regional Climate, and Global Climate.
Weather is what is happening right now in one place. Regional Climate is the expected frequency of weather events in one place. Global Climate is based on the total heat energy being retained by the whole system.
In the discussion of global climate change, the important difference is that weather involves heat moving from one place to another. Global Climate is the total temperature of the entire system. People commonly express, in innocent ignorance, that the global environment cannot possibly be warming because it is so cold right here today. We these people don't understand is that weather moves: it did not "get cold" where you live, cold air moved down from the arctic and the warmer air moved someplace else. Looking at weather, you do not get the big picture. Globally, the temperatures of the air and ocean surface (but not deep ocean) are taken and tracked every day. Even when we have rapid warming, we still have freezing cold someplace. People look at their weather for the past two years and see cold winters in their small corner of the world, but are not aware that winter temperaturs parts of the arctic tundra have warmed by 6 degrees.
No climate scientist points to any weather event as proof of global climate change. Even during events such as the Russian heat wave, scientists are careful to say that having such extreme events is normal -- they will become (or have become) more common but it will take a number of years to see it.
Imagine you have a set of dice that you believe are loaded so that snake-eyes come up one out of every 12 rolls (rather than 1/36 as normal). You can roll the dice and get a 7 -- that does not prove that the dice are normal. You roll again and get snake-eyes, that's one snake-eyes in two rolls which is highly unsusual and fits the theory but does not prove anything. You need a lot of date. If you roll 100 times and get 8 snake-eyes then you believe more confidently that you have loaded dice but you still have not proved it and you cannot say that anyone of those 8 times was "caused" by the dice being loaded -- they might have come up snake-eyes anyhow. But after 500 throws, if you got snake-eyes 40 times and you know normal dice would average 13 times, you know know beyond a reasonable doubt that the dice are loaded -- but you still cannot claim that the loading "caused" any single one of the snake-eyes. It is all "probability" which is more easily understood by people who have taken statistics in school.