Adding confusion to the politics of climate change and global warming in the press is the assumption that the terms weather and climate are at some level interchangeable. The two terms are confused with one another, presumably because the same elements (solar radiation, temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation, etc.) make them what they are, but there is more to the story. The main difference between weather and climate is duration. Weather and climate relate to one another in much the same way that an inning in a baseball game compares with the whole game.
The weather is the set of conditions in the atmosphere in one location for a limited period of time—such as throughout the day, at night, or at any particular point during the day. When your local meteorologist says that today will be partly sunny and 80 ⁰F with 10-mile-per-hour southwesterly winds and high humidity, he or she is talking about the weather conditions for some portion of a given day. Climate, however, describes the average condition of the atmosphere over a long period of time, such as across spans of 30 years or more, for a given location. Moreover, weather conditions change from hour to hour and even moment to moment for a single point, neighborhood, town, or city on Earth’s surface. Climate conditions, on the other hand, are far less volatile, and they are often used to describe larger areas—such as parts of countries, whole countries, or even groups of countries.
Climate conditions also differ between one part of the planet and another. We know that Africa’s Sahara has a much hotter and drier climate than South America’s Amazon River basin and Alaska’s rocky coast. The forces that shape the atmospheric conditions in each of these parts of the world are vastly different. In the Sahara, high pressure combined with its tropical location allows for more solar radiation to reach the ground and heat it throughout the year. In contrast, the conditions of Alaska’s Pacific coast are governed by the region’s proximity to the ocean, its subarctic location, vast differences in the number of daylight hours between summer and winter, and warm ocean currents that circulate nearby.
It’s easy to see why people who equate weather with climate might not see the problem of climate change as a big deal, since the weather is always changing. When climates change even slightly, however, the consequences can be much more severe than an afternoon of inclement weather. In the wild, specialized plants and animals that have evolved to adapt to one set of climate conditions face the challenge of being thrust suddenly into conditions that do not suit them. In the human sphere, once-predictable climate conditions become more volatile, and crop yields decline because of increased risks from unexpected flooding, drought, or the effects of unseasonable cold snaps.