CLIMATOLOGY And It's APPLICATION - RTC, Regional Training ...

Climate is defined as the collective state of the atmosphere for a given place
over a specified interval of time. There are three parts to this definition.
The first deals with the state of the atmosphere. The collective state is
classified based on some set of statistics. The most common statistic is the mean, or
average. Climate descriptions are made from observations of the atmosphere and
are described in terms of averages (or norms) and extremes of a variety of weather
parameters, including temperature, precipitation, pressure and winds.
The second part of the climate definition deals with a location. It could be a
climate the size of a cave, vilage, city, country, continent or the world. In weather
and climate studies we are most interested in micro-scale, regional, and global
climates. The climate of a given place should be defined in terms of your purpose.
Time is the final aspect of the definition of climate. A time span is crucial to
the description of a climate. Weather and climate both vary with time. Weather
changes from day to day. Climate changes over much longer periods of time.
Variations in climate are related to shifts in the energy budget and resulting changes
in atmospheric circulation patterns.