If you’ve ever wondered why one freezing day doesn’t “disprove” climate change, or why scientists keep talking about trends instead of single storms, meteorologist Jennifer Gray says it all comes down to understanding the difference between weather and climate.

“Meteorologists and scientists define climate change as shifting weather patterns over long periods of time,” Gray explains.

That distinction is where most confusion begins.

Weather Vs. Climate

Think of weather as what you experience when you step outside: today’s high, tonight’s rain, tomorrow’s storm. Climate, on the other hand, is the long-term pattern behind all of it.

"What's the average high temperature for this area? What should it be based on 20–25 years of data?” Gray elaborates.

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And climate change? It’s when those long-term expectations start to shift.

“Where a tropical system might come on shore at a certain speed and dump a certain amount of rainfall, now that same storm is dumping more rainfall,” she says. “So the storms are becoming different. They're behaving different because of climate change.”

The Biggest Misconception

One of the most common misunderstandings? That climate change only means warming.

“People have in their heads global warming and so anything that doesn't have to do with warming they're like ‘oh where's your climate change now?’” Gray jokes.

But that thinking misses the bigger picture. Huge extremes, both in warm weather and in cold have started to become the norm as scientists track changing climates.

“We're seeing higher temperatures, we're seeing lower temperatures, we're seeing more snowfall, we're seeing heavier rain… the world as a whole is just behaving differently,” Gray says. “It's not necessarily the warming, but the impact that the warming is having on the globe. Everything is a little bit off balance.”

(MORE: Not All Warming Is The Same)

Following The Data

One of Gray’s biggest points: climate change isn’t based on opinions or isolated events. It’s rooted in decades of global data.

That data comes from a worldwide network of scientists tracking patterns over time, not just reacting to what happens in a single season or year.

Scientists confirm any changes by zooming out over decades.

“When you see a shift, that's when that alarm bell sounds,” Gray explains. “That's when you say these trends are changing.”

The Changes You Might Notice

You don’t need a degree in meteorology to spot some of these shifts. In many places, they’re becoming part of everyday life.

“We're seeing longer summers, we're seeing allergy season start earlier and lasting longer, we're seeing spring start earlier,” Gray says. “We're seeing flowers start to bloom at different times than they used to.”

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Other changes show up in more extreme ways.

“We're seeing not only heavier rainfall events, but we're seeing periods of dry spells,” she says. “Drought has become just a huge problem around the globe, just as much as flooding events.”

That push-and-pull (heavier rain on one end, deeper drought on the other) is a hallmark of a changing climate.

If there’s one takeaway Gray wants people to remember, it’s this: climate change isn’t defined by a single day, storm or season.

“It's as a whole how weather events are changing,” she says. “It's based on climate trends that are happening over decades of time.”

However, she adds, “While one event may not define climate change, the patterns that we're seeing globally overall very much do.”

And those patterns, she emphasizes, are worth paying attention to.