experience weather every day

We experience weather every day in all its wonderful variety. Most of the time it is familiar, yet it never
repeats exactly. We also experience the changing seasons and associated changes in the kinds of
weather. In summer, fine sunny days are interrupted by outbreaks of thunderstorms, which can be
violent. Outside the tropics, as winter approaches the days get shorter, it gets colder, and the weather
typically fluctuates from warm, fine spells to cooler and snowy conditions. These seasonal changes are
the largest changes we experience at any given location. Because they arise in a well-understood way
from the regular orbit of the Earth around the Sun, we expect them, we plan for them, and we even look
forward to them. We readily and willingly plan (and possibly adapt) summer swimming outings or winter
ski trips. Farmers plan their crops and harvests around their expectation of the seasonal cycle. By
comparison with this cycle, variations in the average weather from one year to the next are quite
modest, as they are over decades or human lifetimes. Nevertheless, these variations can be very
disruptive and expensive if we do not expect them and plan for them. For example, in summer in the
central United States, the major drought in 1988 and the extensive heavy rainfalls and flooding in 1993
were at the extremes for summer weather in this region. (In the upper Mississippi Basin, rainfalls in
May, June, and July changed from about 150 millimeters in 1988 to over 500 mm in 1993.) These two
very different summers were the result of very different weather patterns. We assumed, before their
occurrence, that the usual summertime mix of rain and sun would occur and that farmers crops would
flourish. Because this assumption.

These weather patterns and kinds of weather constitute a short-term climate variation or fluctuation. If
they repeat or persist over prolonged periods, then they become a climate change. For instance, in parts
of the Sahara Desert we now expect hot and dry conditions, unsuitable for human habitation, where we
know that civilizations once flourished thousands of years ago. This is an example of a climate change.
How has the climate changed? What are the factors contributing to climate and therefore to possible
change? How might climate change in the future? How does a change in climate alter the weather that
we actually experience? How much certainty can we attach to any predictions? What do we do in the
absence of predictability? Why are climate change and associated weather events important? What are
the likely impacts on human endeavors and society and on natural-resource-based economic activities,
such as agriculture? These are some of the questions we address in this module. Our discussion of
impacts will focus on human activities. Although very important, the impacts of climate change on the
natural environment and the unmanaged biosphere are not dealt with here. Some of these
consequences are discussed further in the Global Change Instruction Program module Biological
Consequences of Global Climate Change.