WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: What's the Difference Between Weather and Climate?

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

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<v Speaker 1>Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here with a classic episode

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<v Speaker 1>from our archives. In this one, we wanted to really

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<v Speaker 1>clear up the differences between two related but separate concepts,

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<v Speaker 1>weather versus climate. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here. You

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<v Speaker 1>might remember when in Republican Senator James Inhoff of Oklahoma

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<v Speaker 1>set out to refute the quote hysteria over global warming

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<v Speaker 1>by tossing a snowball around inside the US Capital. The

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<v Speaker 1>obvious implication was, how could the climate be changing that

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<v Speaker 1>radically from humans burning fossil fuels and pumping greenhouse gases

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<v Speaker 1>into the atmosphere, since we still have snowfall and chilly

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<v Speaker 1>temperatures on a winter day. But even if you're not

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<v Speaker 1>a U. S. Senator from an oil producing state, you

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<v Speaker 1>might be wondering how it is that scientists can predict

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<v Speaker 1>climate trends over many years but can't predict what the

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<v Speaker 1>weather will be three weeks from today. Reason is that

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<v Speaker 1>weather and climate are two very different things. Basically, whether

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<v Speaker 1>it is what happens today or tomorrow or this week,

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<v Speaker 1>it's the day to day variations. Climate, meanwhile, happens over

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<v Speaker 1>many years. It's the combined long term average of weather events.

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<v Speaker 1>Scientists look at climate in terms of fixed thirty year periods.

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<v Speaker 1>Right now, for example, scientists are comparing the daily temperature

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<v Speaker 1>to the period that started in nine and ended in one.

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<v Speaker 1>They'll shift forward ten years and start comparing temperatures to

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<v Speaker 1>the period between, and so on. Scientists rely on thirty

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<v Speaker 1>year periods because it's an amount of time that's long

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<v Speaker 1>enough to produce meaningful comparisons, but just short enough that

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<v Speaker 1>any changes that occur will be subtle without being imperceptible.

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<v Speaker 1>Twenty years might not show enough change, and fifty years

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<v Speaker 1>might be too drastic. To make sense of those, thirty

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<v Speaker 1>year periods help us put the weather on a particular

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<v Speaker 1>day in the right context. Comparing the temperature on December

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<v Speaker 1>the same day a hundred years ago wouldn't provide that

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<v Speaker 1>much useful information because the climate was too different then,

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<v Speaker 1>but comparing it to the average of the temperature readings

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<v Speaker 1>for every December five between, when the climate conditions were

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<v Speaker 1>pretty much constant, makes it possible to say whether a

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<v Speaker 1>given December five is an unusually cold or warm day.

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<v Speaker 1>We spoke with Jonathan Martin, a professor of atmospheric and

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<v Speaker 1>oceanic studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He explained,

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<v Speaker 1>or trying to compare apples to apples when it comes

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<v Speaker 1>to prediction, whether in climate are also very different. Weather forecasting,

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<v Speaker 1>Martin explains, is based upon observation of conditions that are

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<v Speaker 1>already occurring in real time in the atmosphere. Because those

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<v Speaker 1>conditions only exist for a short time. Whether it can

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<v Speaker 1>be reliably forecast only over relatively short periods of ten

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<v Speaker 1>to fourteen days at most, though Martin said that's theoretical,

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<v Speaker 1>My confidence ends at day eight. Envisioning climate, in contrast,

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<v Speaker 1>is much more low resolution. Scientists are trying to project

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<v Speaker 1>what the trend will be over a long period, not

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<v Speaker 1>what the weather will be like on a specific day

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<v Speaker 1>fifty or a hundred years from now. That involves gathering

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<v Speaker 1>and crunching huge amounts of data in powerful computers and

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<v Speaker 1>doing modeling. We also spoke with Jeffrey S. Duke's director

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<v Speaker 1>of the Climate Change Research Center at Purdue University. He said,

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<v Speaker 1>in one sense, climate does not affect weather. It's a

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<v Speaker 1>description of the weather over a long period. You could

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<v Speaker 1>turn that around and say that climate provides you with

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<v Speaker 1>information about how likely you are to get a given

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<v Speaker 1>type of weather at a given time of year. But

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<v Speaker 1>historically the climate has been determined by the weather over

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<v Speaker 1>long periods. He continued. In another sense, though, climate for

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<v Speaker 1>a given location is determined by a bunch of factors,

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<v Speaker 1>such as the latitude and position on the planet, which

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<v Speaker 1>affects how it is influenced by the circulation of the

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<v Speaker 1>atmosphere and oceans, and the daytime heating of continents. Climate

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<v Speaker 1>is also influenced by the composition of the atmosphere, the

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<v Speaker 1>transport of water from soil to air by plants, and

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<v Speaker 1>other factors. On a given day, the sum of all

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<v Speaker 1>these influences determines the weather, but as some of these

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<v Speaker 1>larger scale factors change over time, they will drag the

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<v Speaker 1>weather and the climate along with them. In recent years,

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<v Speaker 1>some of the sharp distinction between weather and climate has

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<v Speaker 1>blurred slightly as scientists have used increasingly sophisticated models and

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<v Speaker 1>accumulated knowledge and an effort to figure out the extent

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<v Speaker 1>to which some specific weather events, say a hurricane, a

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<v Speaker 1>heat wave, or a monster snowstorm, is actually a function

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<v Speaker 1>of climate change driven by humans releasing greenhouse emissions into

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<v Speaker 1>the atmosphere. By running thousands of computer simulations, they can

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<v Speaker 1>conduct what if experiments, seeing how the atmosphere would behave

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<v Speaker 1>if you removed one factor or another. Although such analysis

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<v Speaker 1>is still a work in progress, Martin thinks that eventually

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<v Speaker 1>it will be possible to determine the extent to which

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<v Speaker 1>specific weather events are influenced by climate change. Some of

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<v Speaker 1>that research is already bearing results. The National Oceanic and

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<v Speaker 1>Atmospheric Administration presented a paper in December in which they

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<v Speaker 1>concluded that three extreme weather events in that year's record

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<v Speaker 1>global heat, extreme heat over Asia and unusually warm waters

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<v Speaker 1>in the Bearing Sea would not have been possible without

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<v Speaker 1>human caused climate change. Today's episode is based on the

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<v Speaker 1>article weather in Climate, What's the Difference? On how stuff

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<v Speaker 1>works dot com written by Patrick J. Kaiger. Brain Stuff

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<v Speaker 1>is production of Our Heart Radio in partnership with how

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<v Speaker 1>stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang.

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