Climatology

Climatology is the scientific study of climates, defined as the long-term description of atmospheric conditions across space and time. It seeks to understand the statistics of weather, including typical values, ranges, and the frequency of extreme events, over seasons, decades, and longer periods. It differs from meteorology, which deals with short-term weather forecasting, by focusing on climate normals, variability, and trends.

Climate data come from weather stations, satellites, ocean buoys, and paleoclimate proxies such as tree rings, ice cores, and sediment records. These data are used to construct climate normals (typically 30-year averages) and to analyze trends in temperature, precipitation, wind, and other variables. Climate models, ranging from global to regional scales, are employed to simulate past climates and project future changes under different greenhouse gas scenarios.

Subfields include historical climatology, palaeoclimatology, synoptic climatology, urban climatology, and climate dynamics. Applications span water resource management, agriculture, infrastructure design, disaster risk reduction, and policy making.

Climate change is a major area within climatology, addressing attribution of observed changes to natural variability and human activities, and assessing impacts and adaptation needs. Challenges include incomplete historical records, biases in data, uneven geographic coverage, and uncertainties in future projections. Overall, climatology provides the evidence base for understanding how the climate system behaves and how it may respond to forcing factors.