Arguments
Fact brief - Is the climate as unpredictable as the weather?
Posted on 10 May 2025 by Sue Bin Park
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Is the climate as unpredictable as the weather?
Climate predictions are more reliable than weather forecasts because they model long-term trends driven by large-scale, predictable factors, like greenhouse gas emissions, rather than short-term local conditions.
Weather forecasts aim to predict daily changes in temperature or precipitation with great detail. These are primarily influenced by rapidly shifting conditions, making forecasts less accurate beyond a few days. Small changes in today’s weather can lead to very different outcomes tomorrow.
In contrast, climate models project broad patterns over decades, predicting how the planet’s baseline will shift. Projections of rising average temperatures are based on well-understood factors like the greenhouse effect, recently driven by our constant CO2 emissions.
A review of climate models published since the 1970s found that they accurately predicted the rise in average global temperatures.
Scientists continue to refine models with historical data and lessons learned since the beginning of computer climate modeling fifty years ago.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to quotes such as this one.
Sources
EarthScan Weather vs. climate: can they be predicted?
NOAA Climate Models
Geophysical Research Letters Evaluating the Performance of Past Climate Model Projections
Carbon Brief Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming?
About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.
I'd also say "no," since I've used a geography map book from 70 years ago and their climate maps are still sort of valid even with climate change. I've seen elsewhere (like when to plant) that the zone lines have moved a bit with climate change, but not much.
Climate (which is an aggregate of a lot of data over many years) is what you expect, weather (a particular local, short-term configuration) is what you get. I live in what is known as a humid subtropical climate near the Rio Grande Valley, and it's been that way for a looooog time, and is quite different from a trundra climate. I did a calculation and we are getting a bit warmer over the past several decades, but not a huge amount.
In sociology over 100 yrs ago Durkheim noted that suicide rates (aggregate stats) were about the same year to year, and that while one cannot predict at the individual case level who will commit suicide (tho psychology can help), it is "social facts" (his term, which also includes "cultural facts") that determine suicide rates & whether they slightly go up or down.
I'm also thinking brownian motion — can't predict where each molecule will go, but on aggregate at a more macro level things become more predictable.