What is the difference between climate change and climate variability?
• Climate variability is the term used to describe a range of weather conditions that, averaged together, describe the “climate” of a region. In some parts of the world, or in any region for certain time periods or parts of the year, this variability can be weak, i.e. there is not much difference in the conditions within that time period. However, in other places or time periods, conditions can swing across a large range, from freezing to very warm, or from very wet to very dry, thereby exhibiting strong variability. A certain amount of this is understood and accepted by the region’s inhabitants. Occasionally, an event or sequence of events occurs that has never been witnessed or recorded before, such as the exceptional hurricane season in the Atlantic in 2005 (though even that could be part of natural climate variability). If such a season does not recur within say, the next 30 years, we would look back and call it an exceptional year, but not a harbinger of change. For the scientific
