This video, we're going to differentiate between the weather and the climate. The term weather refers to local short-term atmospheric conditions, usually measured over a period of just a few hours or days. The temperature, precipitation, cloud cover, and wind are four key components of the weather. Now, the weather tends to be quite variable and unpredictable even on a short-term basis of just a few hours, where in the morning it could be sunny weather, and in the afternoon it could be quite rainy and stormy weather. On a graph like this one that we can see here that has atmospheric conditions on the y-axis and time on the x-axis on a short-term scale of just a few hours or days, we might expect to see quite a lot of variability and unpredictability.
So we might expect our graph to look something like this, for example. Now, the climate, on the other hand, refers to long-term averages of the weather conditions in a specific region, usually measured over a period of years, decades, or centuries, and therefore, the climate has less variability and more predictable patterns. And that's why our lesson focuses on climate rather than focusing on weather. The climate is also going to be the primary factor impacting biogeography and the distribution of land organisms or terrestrial organisms, and aquatic organisms that live in the water use the water as a barrier to protect it from atmospheric conditions, so they're not impacted as much by them. Now, down below in this image on the right, again, we can see that the climate is on a long-term scale of years or decades, looking at averages.
On a similar graph like this one, notice we have the time on the x-axis on a long-term scale. We might expect to see less variability and more predictability, something like that, for example. This here concludes our lesson, and I'll see you in our next video.