Monday was hot, the sky was blue. Today it rained a trickle. Last week it snowed for two days straight. The weather is totally fickle!
Weather. It keeps you guessing. It makes every day an adventure. Whatever the weather is doing now, it’s probably going to be doing something else in a matter of hours.
Weather also can vary abruptly from place to place. Sometimes the places are very close together. It could be raining at your house, but dry at school a few blocks away.
Meteorologists are scientists who study weather and weather prediction. With lots of high-tech tools, including the GOES satellites and radar and other ground-based instruments, meteorologists can give us a good idea of what the weather will be like for a few days in the future.
Climate is different.
Climate is the bigger picture of temperatures, rainfall, wind and other conditions over a larger region and longer time. Climate scientists (called climatologists) have sorted Earth’s regional climates into categories, or zones, based mostly on average temperatures and precipitation. These are the characteristics that determine whether a region is a tundra, a desert, or a rain forest.
Here’s a map that shows Earth divided up by climate zones.