Weather forecasts are unreliable beyond about ten days, yet climate projections for the year 2100 are treated as dependable. How can both be true? The apparent contradiction dissolves once you notice that the two claims are about different things.
Weather is the specific state of the atmosphere at a particular place and time, and it is chaotic: small differences in initial conditions grow rapidly, which is why forecasts decay. Climate is the statistical distribution of that weather over long periods. Individual outcomes remain unpredictable, but the average behaviour responds systematically to changes in energy balance, and averages are far more stable than individual events.
The distinction matters for public argument. Claims that a cold spell disproves warming, or that a hot summer proves it, confuse a single sample with a distribution. Researchers can predict the shape of the distribution with confidence while being unable to say much about any given day. Understanding why is essential to reading climate news responsibly.
