Weather vs climate

Science-fiction master Robert Heinlein once pointed out, “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get'That, in a nutshell, is the difference between the two. Weather refers to the day-to-day vagaries of the atmosphere, the conditions that change from hour to hour and from day to day. Climate deals with the average of weather over time. Climate statistics can tell you much about the weather, like a brief description of a person. But once you meet that weather face to face, you may be surprised to discover certain important details that didn't show up in the introduction. For instance, a given day's high temperature may be far different from the climatological average for that day. Desert locales can get a year's worth of rain in 24 hours and hardly any other moisture in the remaining 364 days. Climate itself is more variable than we once believed. Some regions that were covered by a kilometre-thick ice sheet 20,000 years ago are now temperate – but they might become virtually sub-tropical in another century or two.