Climate

What is Climate?

Climate is the average weather for a certain place. This is determined by the average temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind and precipitation that is usually gathered over a period of 30 years. Climate differs from weather, in that weather only describes the short-term conditions of these variables in a given region.

Past Climate

Climate wasn't fully documented in the United States until the later 1800s, so how would we know what the climate was like earlier on? There were a few important people in history who documented the weather on a day to day basis, including Lewis and Clark, and Thomas Jefferson. There are multiple websites displaying images of their weather journals.

Another way of telling what the climate was like even farther back can actually be determined by the rings in trees. Paleoclimatology is the study of past climate from hundreds to millions of years ago. One of the most common Paleoclimate studies are about tree ring data. Trees that grow a single annual ring can preserve a record of the conditions they experienced each year.