  From the ancient Greek origins of the word (klíma, “an
inclination or slope”—eslope”—e.g., of the Sun’s rays; a
latitude zone of the Earth; a clime) , and from its earliest
usage in English, climate has been understood to mean the
atmospheric conditions that prevail in a given region or zone.
In the older form, “clime clime, it was sometimes taken to
include all aspects of the environment, including the natural
vegetation. The best modern definitions of climate regard it as
constituting the total experience of weather and atmospheric
behaviour over a number of years in a given region. Climate is
not just the “average weather” (an obsolete, and always
inadequate, definition). It should include not only the average
values of the climatic elements that prevail at different times
but also their extreme ranges , and variability , and the
frequency of various occurrences. Just as one year differs from
another, decades and centuries are found to differ from one
another by a smaller, but sometimes significant, amou