2.4.1—Climate vs. weather
- Syllabus
- First assessment 2026
- Objective
- 2.4.1
- Level
- HL
Use the Time Window to Separate Weather from Climate
Weather is the atmosphere now or soon; climate is the pattern of weather measured over many years.
Classify a claim by its time window and statistics. A single observation describes weather; a long-term average, trend or frequency describes climate.
Today’s 35°C is weather; a 30-year rise in average summer temperature is climate evidence.
A single unusual day is one weather observation; a climate claim requires a long record of averages, trends or event frequencies.
Climate is not ‘the weather somewhere else’; it is a long-term distribution of weather.