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Make Your Own Weather Station
Take a look out your window. What do you see? Is it sunny or cloudy? Clear or rainy? Windy or calm? What you see happening outside is weather.
Weather happens in the atmosphere, or the air around us. The conditions in the atmosphere are always changing: it can be hot or cold, wet or dry, moving or still. That's why we count on meteorologists to tell us what the weather will be like over the next few days.
Meteorologists use special tools to record data about the weather. They study the data to detect patterns. These patterns help them predict the weather.
Make your own weather station to gather data about your local weather.
So What's Climate?
If you're talking about the conditions outside right now, that's weather. But if you're talking about the usual conditions of a place year after year, that's climate! Climate is the average weather in a location over a long period of time. For example, the climate in Miami is warm and sunny, even though the weather there today might be cold and rainy.
There are many different types of climates, like polar, rainforests, and deserts.
Scientists that study climate are called climatologists. They want to understand how climate works, what it was like in the past, and what will happen in the years to come.
What's the climate in your town like? Make your own weather station to watch the weather closely, month after month, to find out.
Image Credits:
Polar bears on ice floes, courtesy of NOAA/OAR/OER; rainforest, courtesy of NPS; All other images, courtesy of AMNH.