school energy&environment

What is climate?

The word climate derives from the Greek word κλιμα, or inclination. Climate, in fact, is partly determined by the inclination of the sun’s rays on the Earth’s surface, which varies with the latitude and seasons. The term “climate” is often used as a synonym of meteorological “weather” even though their meanings are quite different. Meteorological weather is the set of meteorological elements that characterize the atmosphere at a precise moment. If we look out of the window we can immediately see what the weather is like. The climate, instead, is defined as the “set of meteorological phenomena (e.g. temperature, precipitation, winds, etc.) that characterize the average state of the atmosphere at a particular point of the Earth’s surface”, (according to the definition given by J. Hann an Austrian meteorologist). Due to the extreme variability of meteorological parameters, the World Meteorological Organization has established that, in order to identify climatic characteristics, and therefore the “average state of the atmosphere”, of a particular location, the minimum duration of the historical time-series of meteorological data must be at least 30 years. The discipline that studies the climate, its elements and its factors, and classifies the types of climate is called climatology.