What is the difference between environment and climate

Webpage National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Webpage explaining how weather data are collected and processed to become climate data products U. Statistical Weather and Climate Information Website National Centers for Environmental Information Website providing a large amount of downloadable historical weather and climate information, which may also be plotted by users on graphs and maps National Climate Assessment Website U.

Global Change Research Program Website of the latest National Climate Assessment report, which summarizes the recent and future status of climate in the United States Present Day Climate Change Factsheet , American Geosciences Institute Factsheet summarizing how Earth's climate is monitored, influences on the climate, and evidence for present-day climate change.

Related Frequently Asked Questions. American Geosciences Institute. How is ocean acidification affecting sea life? National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They can also tell us when we might expect the warmest day of the year or the coldest day of the year at that location. Weather tells you what to wear each day.

Climate tells you what types of clothes to have in your closet. Across the globe, observers and automated stations measure weather conditions at thousands of locations every day of the year. Some observations are made hourly, others just once a day. In many locations around the United States , systematic weather records have been kept for over years.

With these long-term records, we can detect patterns and trends. Like the United States, different regions of the world have varying climates. But, we can also describe the climate of an entire planet—referred to as the global climate. Global climate is a description of the climate of a planet as a whole, with all the regional differences averaged. Overall, global climate depends on the amount of energy received by the sun and the amount of energy that is trapped in the system.

And, these amounts are different for different planets. While the weather can change in just a few minutes or hours, climate changes over longer time frames. And, even larger climate changes happen over hundreds and thousands of years. Today, climates are changing. Our Earth is warming more quickly than it has in the past according to the research of scientists.

But global warming has changed the conditions that can lead to these extreme events. It has, you might say, stacked the deck. A team of scientists looked at the extreme heat in the Pacific Northwest US this summer. Their study has not yet been peer reviewed — these things take time. But the results were pretty clear.

According to Di Liberto, who took a close look at the study, the researchers found that the heat wave was roughly a one-in-1,year event in today's climate, and that it would have been at least times more rare before global warming.

So what about that snowball? Maybe someone will take that to the Senate floor. Register or Log In. The Magazine Shop.