As scientists warn about the increasing dangers of a warming climate, some people across the United States and around the world are dealing with cold, winter weather. So, what's the difference between the day-to-day weather and the climate? When you look out the window and see cloudy or sunny skies, rain or snow, you're seeing the day's weather. It's temporary and can change quickly. A sunny summer day can suddenly become rainy when a thunderstorm blows by. Climate, on the other hand, is more than just a few warm or cool days. Think of the game of baseball. Pitchers throw thousands of pitches in their career. All of those pitches added together are like climate. One strike down the middle would be one day of weather.Climate describes the typical weather conditions in an entire region for a very long time, 30 years or more. Keeping an eye on changing weather can help us plan ahead, but scientists around the world are also watching changes in Earth's climate. And they have a lot of data that shows that Earth is getting warmer."Last year was one of the hottest ever recorded, and the last 10 years have all been the hottest recorded," said NASA Earth scientist Steven Pawson. "And that means we're seeing a long and persistent increase in global temperatures that's caused by greenhouse gas accumulations in the atmosphere."When you hear scientists refer to climate change, they're talking about a change in climate patterns attributed largely to increased levels of carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels. These are slow changes that are generally seen when looking at long-term trends, not day-to-day weather conditions. But Pawson said some severe weather events are becoming more extreme in some cases because of those changes."Even though these actual global temperature changes seem quite small overall, the important thing is they are very significant in terms of the amount of energy being transferred, and it enables a lot of extreme events to become more significant," Pawson said. "For instance, hurricanes can be stronger and more intense and give more rainfall. In other places, we're seeing droughts that are quite extreme."One bitterly cold January day doesn't disprove climate change — that's just weather. But a trend with many warmer-than-average Januarys shows that climate change is happening. "The jet stream pattern, which dictates day-to-day weather in the month of January 2022, has given us many days with below-normal temperatures," said sister station WMUR meteorologist Mike Haddad. "But five of the last six Januarys, we've seen temperatures run above the norm — just another indicator of our warming climate."