What causes climate and weather?

What is climate?
What controls it?
How is climate different from weather?

Weather is what happens on a day-to-day basis. With the right tools, you can forecast the weather for the next few days with reasonable accuracy. The climate is an aggregate of weather patterns. Forecasting climate involves timescales ranging from years to centuries.

So, what controls climate?
Let's investigate the biggest factors that affect climate:

1. the intensity of sunshine and its variation with latitude
2. the distribution of land and water
3. ocean currents
4. prevailing winds
5. positions of high and low pressure areas
6. mountain barriers
7. altitude
8. energy

Next page   -> solar radiation

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