Montana Climate Office

About the Montana Climate Office
The Montana Climate Office has been an entity within Montana since the mid-1970's. In 2006 Governor Schweitzer designated the Montana Climate Office as the official state climate office.

Satellite data published
The Montana Climate Office has published greenness, enhanced greenness, evapotranspiration, and potential evapotranspiration for the years 2000 to present.

A message from Dr. Kelsey Jencso, State Climatologist

"Welcome to the Montana Climate Office. We are excited about the opportunity to work with fellow Montanan's to advance our collective understanding of climate variability and how it impacts the resources and industries we care about. By understanding climate variability, uncertainty, and leveraging existing information we can work together to build the knowledge and resilience necessary to sustain Montanan's livelihoods into the future."

Weather or Climate?

The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. To understand climate at a given place requires synthesizing the variation in weather over relatively long periods of time. Weather is the day-to-day interaction of factors like temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, visibility, and wind. Scientists pursue an understanding of climate trends or cycles of variability and place those phenomena into the bigger picture of possible longer term changes in our climate.