Another Troubling Climate Article

[mudr]

The terms global warming and climate change get used interchangeably, but really have two different meanings. Neither are necessary incorrect. Global warming refers to the phenomenon that, *on average across the world on a long term scale*, the earth is warming. Note, this is the broadest average across everywhere and over a long time. This is happening and is supported with data, but leaves out many of the nuances.

Climate change is really a better term that does a good job of really describing the effects of what we that were caused by global warming. The word climate is not just temperature, but all aspects of the *long term* weather average. Temperature, annual rain, annual minimum temperature, average January low, average July high, rainfall per storm, a million other averages, and the variability around those averages. This is a better term to use, as it's not just getting warmer, but there are many other things changing in our climate. For instance, while there is a warming trend across the globe, that trend is actually stronger for, say, average January overnight low temperatures. We are *on average* not seeing as cold of nights in winter. Also, we are seeing that variability increase in a number of climate variables. A good example is rainfall at a number of places, for example many warmer climates (including california) are experiencing wide fluctuations in rainfall. The rain is much less consistent, and when they do get rain it is a 5 inch mudslide inducing event.

So that is the difference between global warming and climate change. Neither is incorrect, but climate change does a good job of acknowledging the fact that not just one thing is changing, it is actually many aspects of climate. Also, global warming is really a term used at the globe level (again average temperature across the entire globe), climate change does a better job at being applied to the regional level, which is good because not all regions are being affected in the same way or the same magnitude.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk