Climatography

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The scientific study and systematic description of the climate of a region, including its temperature, rainfall, winds and seasonal patterns
2. A branch of geography devoted to describing and recording the climatic conditions of a particular area over time
3. Written or systematic accounts of how weather conditions typically behave across a place, based on long-term observations of its atmosphere

Etymology: Climatography is the scientific description of climate, the systematic study of weather patterns and conditions across a place or region over time. It is built directly from two familiar parts: "climate," which comes from Greek "klima," meaning slope or region (the idea being the inclination of the sun's rays toward different parts of the earth), and "-graphy," from Greek "graphia," meaning writing or description. Put together, the word literally means writing about a region's climate, in the same way that geography describes the earth and topography describes the lie of the land. The pattern is the interesting part here. English has a large family of "-graphy" words, and "climatography" simply adds the climate element to that set, so a reader who knows "bibliography" or "photography" can work out its meaning at once. The word is a plain technical formation rather than a term with a dramatic backstory, so its value lies in how transparently it reveals its parts.