Climatology

Climatology is the scientific study of climate, meaning the statistical patterns of weather conditions such as temperature, precipitation and atmospheric circulation averaged over long periods, typically decades or longer, in a given region or across the whole planet. It draws on instrumental weather records, historical documents, and proxy data preserved in tree rings, ice cores and ocean sediments to reconstruct climate variability over timescales from years to millions of years, and the discipline has become central to documenting and projecting human-caused climate change through both observational analysis and numerical climate models. The field is closely related to but distinct from meteorology, which concerns the short-term physical state of the atmosphere.