From Dog Walking to Weather and Climate

Notes from our reviewers

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• Teaching Tips
  Very short and best used as an introduction or refresher when discussing the climate-weather link. Great visual illustration of difference between a trend and variation, a distinction commonly made in discussing the difference between climate and weather or any other long-term trend vs short-term variation.
• About the Science
  Video is a simple animated illustration of the difference between trend (human walking a straight line) and variation (dog on a leash wandering in various directions); analogy made to climate (Klima) vs weather (Vaer). Comments from expert scientist: Overall it is a good resource but there seems to be a leap of faith between weather/climate and variation/trend. There is not a clear connection between the two. [An enhancement would be to include] a graph of temperature or precipitation and point out variation and trend.
• About the Pedagogy
  Video is simple, short, and should help students remember the difference between climate and weather.
• Technical Details/Ease of Use
  The graph drawn to illustrate the concept looks like the Keeling curve, so relates to other formal graphs of climate change impacts.