Hey Ray: Weather vs. Climate
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - There are some things that people think are the same but aren't. Like jams and jellies. We are going to keep this related to the atmosphere, though, so our topic is climate and weather.
Usually, when I make a post about a cold snap someone will undoubtedly comment similar to, "What happened to global warming?"
Then when I post about a string of very warm days someone will comment that it claims it to be thanks to global warming. In both of these instances, climate is incorrectly attributed to short-term weather.
Weather is simply the state of the atmosphere at a particular place and time. Climate is the historical record of average daily and seasonal weather events. That is the average of all weather, but usually, we view it in 30-year chunks.
Since climate is the historical average of the weather at a location, you need a good amount of data to describe it. Think about it this way, if you have a 100-degree day one year, and the next year it is 0 degrees, that averages out to 50 degrees. That is not a good description of that climate. The more data you feed into those averages, the clearing the picture of the climate is.
Weather is sort of like one step in a marathon and climate is the whole marathon. One or two steps usually can't give you a good description of the whole race. You need a lot more data to come to conclusions.
This also means there are differences between meteorologists and climatologists! Meteorologists, study the short-term state of the atmosphere. Meteorologists will sometimes compare weather patterns with the climate, or averages, to put the weather into perspective. Climatologists study the long-term state of the atmosphere and the shits that occur in it.
As for the differences between jellies and jams: Jelly is made with strained fruit juice and jam is made with mashed fruit.