Where Does the Weather End and Climate Change Begin?
Weather is simple – rain, snow, hail, sun, wind, temperature. You can look out your window and see what it is right now.
If you’ve lived in the same place for a while, you can probably guess what the weather will be like in a few hours, too. You may even be able to predict ahead a day, and be right as often as the weatherman is. Unless you live somewhere with monotonous weather, though, you will have a hard time projecting the specific temperature and rainfall next week without help from scientific measurements.
Climate, in contrast, is a billion piece jigsaw puzzle. Climate is a pattern. Unless you keep detailed records over a long period of time, you can’t really tell for sure if the climate is changing. This is because the day-to-day weather
The gathering clouds of climate change threatens life as we know it
will bounce around all over the place.
You may have a hard time seeing the overall climate picture even for your own little corner of the world. So you can understand how much more difficult it is to determine climate patterns over millions of years for the entire planet. Yet a world wide network of scientists is engaged in this urgent task.
Climate scientists are not all on one formal team. Instead, these researchers are a loosely knit and shifting network communicating by email, published journal articles, data exchange, conferences, telephone, and meetings.
As with any group of people, climate scientists will have their differences of opinion. Sometimes a few of these researchers will say or do something that they wish would never be publicly aired.
Think about any team you’re a part of, whether at work, on a sports team, in a club or neighborhood committee, at your church, or even an informal circle of friends that meets for lunch every once in a while. Really, aren’t there differences of opinion, people who are less (more…)
