Weather vs. Climate: What Is The Difference?

While weather and climate are both changes in the atmosphere, the difference between them is a measure of time.

What Does Weather Mean?

Weather is the conditions of the atmosphere over a short amount of time. These changes can be minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, month-to-month or even season-to-season. Weather includes sunshine, cloud cover, precipitation, thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, hail, wind, atmospheric pressure and temperature.

Weather is what you can expect for a given day in the near future.

What Does Climate Mean?

Climate is a description of a long-term pattern of the weather in a certain area. When examining climate, averages of precipitation, temperature, sunshine, wind and other weather variables are taken, usually over 30-years. Though, even larger climate changes can happen over hundreds and thousands of years. There are also shorter-term climate variations, such as El Niño, La Niña, volcanic eruptions or other changes within the Earth system. The timescale on these shorter variations can range from a few weeks to many years.

If a typical short-term weather event, like heavy rain or extremely dry weather, happens over a prolonged period, then this now could transition over to a climate event. Specifically, heavy, above average precipitation can occur for minutes, hours or even days and be classified as weather. This is known as flooding. But, if it continuously rains higher than what typically happens for months, years, decades or longer, then this changes the long-term weather pattern and the overall climate of an area.

At the same time, extremely dry weather conditions can occur for days, weeks and months, which could be classified as a short-term drought. If it starts to go on for years, this is now a prolonged drought, which changes the climate. An extended drought is more likely to lead to more frequent and more destructive wildfires.

Climate can tell us what could happen based on previous trends, such as when the heaviest snowfall usually occurs, the warmest or coldest days of the year or when the driest time of the year takes place. This helps us when we are planning vacations, planting your garden and when you might need to buy snow tires. This data also helps farmers when planting their crops as most crops need warmer weather to thrive. Changes in long-term precipitation, such as a prolonged period of above normal precipitation or unusually dry precipitation, can be deadly to crops.

However, climate does not provide any specific details about what they weather will be on a given day.

Meteorologist vs. Climatologist

Both meteorologist and climatologist are atmospheric scientists, but their areas of study and job can differ.

A meteorologist usually studies short-term atmospheric changes in the weather. Meteorologists include government officials, like those in the National Weather Service, television meteorologists and private sector meteorologists, like the ones here at WeatherBug. To create a forecast for a certain day, meteorologists use weather observations, such as temperature, rainfall and wind, computer forecast models and images from satellites and radars.

A climatologist usually examines long-term climate patterns. Climatologists are government officials, like those who work in the Climate Prediction Center, university professors or those in the private sector. Data can come from ice cores, samples from soil, water, air and plants and weather observations such as temperature and precipitation over a large span of time. They then use this data to formulate a forecast for what the weather and climate will be in the future.

Why Is It Important to Study Both Weather and Climate?

It is important to study weather as it tells us what we can expect and keep us safe from short-term changes in temperature, precipitation, wind and more. Knowing the temperature each day is important as we will be informed on what to wear each day. You don’t want many layers of clothing if it is going to be hot, while bitterly cold temperatures and not enough layers can be extremely dangerous. Precipitation and severe weather can be destructive and potentially deadly.

Meanwhile, studying climate can inform us of potential impacts for a long-term period in the future. Changing regional climates could alter weather, crop yields, water levels, ice coverage, human health and biodiverse ecosystems like the oceans, forests, swamps and deserts.

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Image credit: California was affected by a historic drought from 2011-2016. When faced with a water shortage, agricultural land in California’s Central Valley that remains unplanted, or “fallow,” tends to increase markedly because farmers are unable to fully irrigate their crops. (NASA Goddard Photo and Video)