Sunday, April 8, 2018

Weather and Climate

Weather has been a bit strange in the last couple of years but the bigger question concerns changes in climate.

Weather is the way we observe climate most dramatically, but any given day's weather doesn't mean much.

It does mean something when you start to see weather events that are extremely rare start to happen more frequently.

The forces that impact our weather are driven by a series of complex factors and many of these factors are impacted by energy.

More energy in the environment represents more dramatic events.

Of course the vast amount of energy comes from the sun.

The earth is bombarded by solar energy constantly and much of it gets used by living organisms but a certain amount gets reflected away.

The amount retained versus the amount reflected away .depends on many factors, one of which is the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

The more energy we retain, the warmer the earth gets and its a pretty simple equation that converts heat into energy.

So does that explain the recent weather?

Its most likely related but we could have unusual weather and not have climate change.

Unless it persists, meaning we have in fact changed the climate.

To some extent climate is the average of weather.  If we have a lot of unusually hot days, the average daily temperature will change.

The link below details what's happening.  What will happen still depends on us.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

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