According to Phillip Elden, a conservation specialist based out of Oregon, both the weather and the climate have an effect on wildlife. However, one is long-term and one only causes an impact for a short while.
Q: What is the difference between climate and weather?
Phillip Elden: Weather is a specific meteorological event. For example, rain on Tuesday is a weather event. Drought, which may take place over many months, is also considered a weather pattern and not part of an area’s climate. Climate, by contrast, is the overall expectation of weather by season based on decades’ worth of history.
Q: Why does weather change from one region to the other so rapidly?
Phillip Elden: There are many things that trigger the weather in a specific location. In Florida, for example, which receives very little snow, the climate is such that the weather tends to stay warm. There are typically only two noticeable seasons in southern Florida, spring and summer. A few states north, in Tennessee, residents experienced all four seasons. This is because Tennessee is much further from the equator, which is historically the hottest part of the Earth.
Q: Are there scientists that study the climate?
Phillip Elden: Yes, they are called climatologists. Like a meteorologist, a climatologist will study the weather. However, they are more interested not in day-to-day weather patterns but in how a region’s climate changes over many years.
Q: What are the types of climate?
Phillip Elden: Scientists give five different names to the type of clients a region may have. These are tropical, dry, temperate, continental, and polar. A tropical climate is typically warm and moist, a dry climate is typically hot, temperate and continental often experience multiple seasons throughout the year, while a polar climate tends to stay below 50° all year round.
