Weather or Climate Sort cards developed by Melissa Lord
Teacher’s Notes
“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get”
In this simple activity, students are asked to sort the cards into two piles – which of the statements refer to ‘weather’ and which to ‘climate’?
You may like to show a short introductory video, for example this one https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EviTnslNxdg, first.
Answers for teachers!
Weather
The clothes that I will wear to go outside today depend on ….
A high temperature of 21oC is predicted this week.
The forecast is for heavy rain on Saturday.
There has been very little rainfall over the last month.
There was snow on the moors in January.
It was very sunny yesterday and I saw many bees on the flowers in the garden.
Climate
The clothes that are in my wardrobe depend on ….
The hills above Rochdale generally have more rain than falls over the hills further east in England.
Usually, the wettest season in England is the winter.
Swifts and swallows migrate to Africa in the late summer and autumn.
For discussion!
It is predicted that in the next ten years there will be more heatwaves than happened during the 1990s.
- heatwaves are weather events, and the statement is about 10 year periods, which are shorter than the usually used 30 year average for climate. However, we do know that global warming will give us hotter and drier heatwaves in the UK in the future.
100 years ago there were more days of snow than there have been over the last few years.
- ‘the last few years’ is too short a period to be representative of climate. However, in the current climate we do have fewer days of snow each year than in the climate of 100 years ago.
