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1. What is resilience?

Resilience is the capacity of individuals, communities, and systems to survive, adapt, and grow in the face of stress and shocks and even transform when conditions require it.

2. What is mitigation?

Mitigation is the action of reducing the severity of something. Climate mitigation is taking action to reduce the effects of climate change on infrastructure and systems.

3. What is adaptation?

Adaptation is the act or process of changing to better suit a situation. Climate adaptation involves adjusting environmental, social, and/or economic systems in response to actual or expected changes in climate conditions and their effects.

4. What is the difference between weather and climate?

Weather is the mix of events that happen daily in our atmosphere. Localized conditions (humidity, wind, temperature, etc) affect the atmosphere to create different weather conditions in individual locations around the globe. Weather is the short-term effects on the atmosphere.

Climate is the long-term trends in weather. Scientist average weather over 30 year periods to determine the climate trends for a location or region. Climate looks across all seasons and helps you predict what the weather will be like during different times of the year.

A simple way to think about it is: weather tells you what kind of clothes to wear today and climate tells you what kinds of clothes to have in your closet.

5. What is climate change?

Climate Change is a term often misunderstood. Climate change in its most basic form is the long-term change in average weather patterns. Scientists calculate climate averages over a 30 year period to determine trends and predict future conditions based on these long-term trends. Though significant changes in climate have occurred throughout Earth’s history, the rate at which those changes occur will have affect our quality of life.