Weathering the storms
Melting ice caps and warmer oceans - how will our coastline cope with a climate of change?
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We like to talk about the weather, to complain about its variability and to blame the weather forecasters for getting it wrong. But what is 'climate', and how does the weather we experience on a day-to-day basis relate to climate change, a subject which is increasingly dominating our newspapers and television screens? Why is it that we can't make a perfect weather forecast? And how can we hope to predict the climate of the 21st century, when we can't say what the weather will be doing in a week's time?
To start with, what affects the climate of the Earth? Why has the temperature of the Earth stayed approximately the same over very long periods of time, without varying by hundreds of degrees?
The temperature of the Earth can be represented by the level of water in a bucket which has a hole in the bottom and water flowing in from a tap at the top...
Click on the arrow to find out how it works.
The amount of water flowing out of the hole in the bucket is determined by the depth of water in the bucket - the higher the water level, the more water is forced out of the hole, so if you open the tap, the water level rises until the amount of water leaving the bucket is again equal to the amount coming in from the tap.
But how does this relate to the climate?
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Content last updated: 13/12/2005
About our expert
Sylvia Knight - a climate scientist - works with the climateprediction.net project, which is trying to produce the most complete forecast of 21st century climate ever attempted. She is responsible for communicating the aims and results of the experiments to as wide an audience as possible.
Sylvia has a degree in Natural Sciences and a PhD in Meteorology, and is co-author of the Open University short course Weather and Climate Modelling.
