Geography & Environmental Science
Climatology is defined as (Penguin Dictionary of Geography):What is Climatology all about?
The science which treats of the various climates of the earth, and their influence on the natural environment.
Geographers generally take a climatological approach to the study of the atmosphere. Weather and climate are two commonly used terms which are sometimes not clearly understood. Weather is the state of the atmosphere at a particular point in time over a given region, while climate is a synthesis or generalisation of the weather observed over a longer time period.
Example of weather Example of climate
(Hurricane Andrew) (Average max Temperature across Vic.)
Meteorology and climatology represent the study of weather and climate respectively, the difference essentially being the different time scales and approaches used for such study. Meteorologists tend to concern themselves with the analysis of actual weather situations, while climatologists are more concerned with the aggregation of such situations.
For example, a meteorologist is more concerned with the three-dimensional instantaneous structure of the atmosphere, while the climatologist has tended to be more concerned with the one- and two-dimensional structure exhibited by long sequences of data. However, in spite of these differences, a basic understanding of atmospheric processes is important to both groups of researchers, as they are each trying to comprehend the same processes and phenomena.
In addition to these basic terms, others are applied to describe the various approaches used in the study of atmospheric problems. These relate to such things as the space and time scale of phenomena studied, as well as the conceptual and analytical approaches taken.