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“Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get,” (Robert Heinlein). “Climate lasts all the time, weather lasts only a few days,” (Mark Twain). Weather tells you what to wear on any given day; climate tells you what wardrobe to have.

Subtle changes in the chemistry or temperature of a complex system, such as changes in the concentration of trace gases in Earth’s atmosphere, can have noticeable and even major effects.

Risk and probability are abstract concepts, yet people employ them in decision making every day. Here are comparisons between everyday risk and probability scenarios and similar climatological concepts.

Climate concepts that are potentially confusing made less so by comparisons to everyday activities.

Systems are nonlinear, but what does that mean to most people? The story of a butterfly flapping its wings in New York and causing a hurricane is probably the most popular nonlinearity fable.

What climate models are and what they do is a common source of confusion.

How do we know how Earth’s climate works?