Historical Climate Observations
An understanding of climate is the basis for exploring climate change.
Climate is the average pattern of weather over decades or centuries, and can be described for a location or for the entire globe.
In contrast, weather is the hour-to-hour and day-to-day state of the atmosphere, such as being rainy or sunny, warm or cold, windy or calm.
Climate can be thought of as average weather, including a locale’s typical weather patterns as well as frequency and intensity of storms, cold outbreaks, and heat waves. These variables have different patterns in different locations, so we say (for example) that southern Virginia has a different climate than the Adirondack Park area of New York State.
This section of the web site is a collection of maps and visualizations developed by CARA researchers using observation data collected through the National Climatic Data Center's (NCDC) Historical Climate Network (HCN).