[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:
My Correlations colleague Michael Tobis has a nice, simple post about the difference between weather and climate that’s worth a look. He starts out:
We climate scientists often hear the case made “If you can’t predict the weather next week, how could you predict the climate in a hundred years?” The answer to the question is hidden in the question. The weather and the climate are not exactly the same thing, and so what you can say about the one and what you can say about the other are also different.
Enjoy!
-cvj
Pingback: weather » Weather Vs Climate
Jude, that was CBS… Check here for the comment.
Swetnam says that climate change — global warming — has increased temperatures in the West about one degree and that has caused four times more fires. Swetnam and his colleagues published those findings in the journal “Science,” and the world’s leading researchers on climate change have endorsed their conclusions.
But what was news to the scientists is something Tom Boatner has noticed for about ten years now. “This kind of low brush would normally be really moist and actually be a fairly good barrier to fire. But as I look at this I just see wilted leaves everywhere. There’s no moisture left in them. They’re dead,” he points out.
…
“You know, there are a lot of people who don’t believe in climate change,” Pelley remarks.
“You won’t find them on the fire line in the American West anymore,” Tom Boatner says. “‘Cause we’ve had climate change beat into us over the last ten or fifteen years. We know what we’re seeing, and we’re dealing with a period of climate, in terms of temperature and humidity and drought that’s different than anything people have seen in our lifetimes.”
Last night on what might have been the ABC evening newscast (not that I can find it on their website), I watched an interesting report on the increasingly hot fires in the west. One of the firefighters said something about how you couldn’t have worked on the fire lines for the last ten years without having come to believe in climate change because the nature of forest fires has changed. At least, it should make you believe in the possibility of drought.
And how is the weather in LA today? A bit smoky, I suspect…
Yes, the clouds of smoke are starting to fill the sky from several directions and I can smell smoke now, even though I’m several miles away.
Yes, the drought and the heat and wind are combining positively to make things markedly worse.
-cvj