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What's the difference between weather and climate?

Thursday 29th Jul 2010 by Dr Liz Bentley

The weather refers to the present conditions of weather parameters, such as temperature, pressure, humidity, wind, rainfall etc, and their variations over a short time period of a few days or weeks. In contrast, climate refers to the statistics of these weather parameters over long periods, ranging from months to hundreds of years. The climate of a region will describe the average conditions and range in weather parameters that one would typically expect to experience for that time of year.

Mark Twain, the American author and humorist, once wrote: "The climate is what we expect, the weather is what we get."

Comments

Other countries have climate: Britain has weather.
Also, Britain is the only country in the world where you can get all four seasons in one day.
Worth remembering that the Derby (first weekend in June) was run in a snowstorm in, I think, 1936.
Posted by John Wilson on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:04:56 +0000
I remember the saying that Britain has the best climate in the world but the worst weather!
Also Melbourne and the Falkland Islands also claim all four seasons experienced in one day.
Posted by Nick Gadd on Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:16:53 +0000

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