January 8, 1998 transcript #: 215-4
Subject(s): climate, weather
Title: CLIMATE VS. WEATHER

People talk about the weather all the time, at least where I come from. But they don’t seem to talk about climate. Hi, I’m meteorologist Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. Perhaps with me more than others, because I’m a weatherman of sorts, people love to bring up the weather, even though the climate is getting all the headlines. And I honestly can’t remember a day when I didn’t hear something like, “What’s with all the rainy weather” or “Boy, the weather has been just great” or “Crazy weather we’re having.” But why don’t they ask about the climate? What if those same folks made comments like “Crazy climate were havin”, or “ Looks like some fine climate today”, or even “Hey Dave, what’s the climate doin’ this weekend?” It sure would sound pretty strange. I bring this up to illustrate the difference between climate and weather. Now we have climate and weather every day, but weather changes very quickly from minute to minute, day to day, so it grabs more attention, and creates more conversation. But climate changes slowly, it’s just average weather. So what’s going on outside in the atmosphere right now is weather. A summation of the weather each day, day after day, year after year, century after century is climate. So changes in climate are hard to notice, hard to prove, and much harder than the quick changing weather, to talk about around town. “Hey Dave, is it gonna snow this weekend?” If you want to find the real forecast for weather or climate for anywhere in the world, check out the weather links at home page www.mountwashington.org. Our show is funded by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive and by the National Science Foundation.