{"id":160,"date":"2011-08-26T18:43:09","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T18:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/?p=160"},"modified":"2011-08-26T18:43:09","modified_gmt":"2011-08-26T18:43:09","slug":"weather-vs-climate-what-is-the-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/2011\/08\/weather-vs-climate-what-is-the-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Weather vs. Climate: What is the difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>How can we reconcile the variability of weather with that of climate?\u00a0 How does our humanness restrict our thinking?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I have been taking Environmental Studies courses for as long as I can remember; continually covered in class is the topic of Climate Change.\u00a0 The first lesson on Climate Change is always the difference between \u201cweather\u201d and \u201cclimate.\u201d\u00a0 The distinction between the two always seems to be a common misconception for us humans.\u00a0 The general public has a tendency to believe that the terms weather and climate are interchangeable.\u00a0 In truth, they are quite different.\u00a0 Weather is defined by the state of the atmosphere with respect to wind, temperature, cloudiness, etc.\u00a0 Climate, on the other hand, is defined as the composite of prevailing weather conditions in a region, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years.\u00a0 It is often thought, \u201cthe climate cannot be warming; we had more snow than usual this month.\u201d\u00a0 Or, on a cool day in August, \u201cthere\u2019s no global warming, it\u2019s supposed to get down to 60 degrees tonight.\u201d\u00a0 The distinct difference between day-to-day weather happenings and changes in climate over a period of years is what humans struggle with most.\u00a0 Because we tend to see things as they are right in front of us, it is often difficult to understand changes over a long period of time.<\/p>\n<p>Our humanness confines our thinking about what to believe when facts and theories are presented to us.\u00a0 As Weart states,<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cEveryone has his own theory \u2013 and each sounds good \u2013 until the next lad comes along with his theory and knocks the others into smithereens.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Humans\u2019 strict, narrow minds allow us to only believe what is right in front of us.\u00a0 When a new theory is presented, we believe the evidence until something better comes along. \u00a0The topic of Climate Change is something so controversial and complex that humans struggle to grasp the concept.\u00a0 Weather is much more simple to understand because we see, experience, and feel changes in weather every day.\u00a0 The climate is too broad for us to notice variability, so we rely on weather patterns to form opinions on Climate Change.\u00a0 A simple understanding of the difference between weather and climate is what will change the public opinion about Climate Change.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How can we reconcile the variability of weather with that of climate?\u00a0 How does our humanness restrict our thinking?<\/p>\n<p>I have been taking Environmental Studies courses for as long as I can remember; continually covered in class is the topic of Climate Change.\u00a0 The first lesson on Climate Change is always the difference between \u201cweather\u201d and \u201cclimate.\u201d\u00a0 The distinction between the two always seems to be a common misconception for us humans.\u00a0 The general public has a tendency to believe that the terms weather and climate are interchangeable.\u00a0 In truth, they are quite different.\u00a0 Weather is defined by the state of the atmosphere with respect to wind, temperature, cloudiness, etc.\u00a0 Climate, on the other hand, is defined as the composite of prevailing weather conditions in a region, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years.\u00a0 It is often thought, \u201cthe climate cannot be warming; we had more snow than usual &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":450,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/450"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}