"Weather" - "el tiempo" o "la clima"?
If I want to say "the weather here is beautiful and warm" should I use "el tiempo" or "la clima"? I don't understand the difference between these words. In the dictionary they both seem to mean weather, although in English we would not say the "climate" is beautiful and "weather" is far down on the list of meanings for "el tiempo". I am writing to someone in Argentina but I don't know if this makes any difference. I would very much appreciate someone's help with this. Thank you.
2 Answers
You should use "el tiempo", because "beautiful" and "warm" are subjective (e.g. non-scientific) ways to describe the weather and they can respond to the subjective (non-scientific) question of "what's the weather like?" = "¿qué tiempo hace?", where the very "like" (in English) and "hace" in Spanish" allude to this subjective (non-scientific) character of both the qualifiers ("beautiful" and "warm") in question and the question addressing them. On the other hand, "la clima" is no longer a "simple" (subjective and non-scientific) word, but a "term"; therefore it is mainly used in metereological descriptions of the weather (e.g. the weather forecast) and is rendered in English by "climate".
Hope this helped a bit.
Hi, Debbie. Welcome to the forum.
What a good question. Like FZ said, we use "¿Qué tiempo hace?" to ask about the weather and "Cómo es el clima" to ask about the general climate in an area.
Here is a list of weather terms that I posted a few days ago.
P.s. A few places in Mexico will use "el clima de hoy," but it is clearly the weather for the day and not the "climate."
