Uploaded February 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
What makes climatologists think they can project climate scenarios decades into the future when meteorologists cannot accurately predict weather more than two weeks in advance? This presentation by Wayne Higgins of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center clarifies the relationships and differences between weather and climate, as well as the differences between natural climate variability and human-induced climate change.
Video produced by the Climate.gov team in cooperation with climate and Earth scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies and institutions. Any opinions voiced by people in these videos are their own; they are not official NOAA statements or opinions. Unless specifically stated otherwise, Climate.gov video productions can be freely republished or re-purposed by others.
What makes climatologists think they can project climate scenarios decades into the future when meteorologists cannot accurately predict weather more than two weeks in advance? This presentation by Wayne Higgins of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center clarifies the relationships and differences between weather and climate, as well as the differences between natural climate variability and human-induced climate change.
Video produced by the Climate.gov team in cooperation with climate and Earth scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies and institutions. Any opinions voiced by people in these videos are their own; they are not official NOAA statements or opinions. Unless specifically stated otherwise, Climate.gov video productions can be freely republished or re-purposed by others.










