In this piece, Zachary Handlos, senior academic professional in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, explains the work of climatologists, stating that “climatologists can take on a lot of roles. It’s important to understand the difference between weather and climate. So weather is the study of what's going on in the atmosphere right now. Climatology looks at data for a certain day and compares it to what’s called a climate normal. What this means is, they take a 30-year period of data for that day, and from that baseline, say, ‘Oh, the temperature today is above average or below average.'”