Climate Test 1 Flashcards
What are the components of the climate system?
Atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, biosphere
What is meant by the climate system?
The climate system is a composite system consisting of 5 interactive components
What is meant by response time?
Response time is the time that it takes for a system to re-equilibrate after a small perturbation has been applied to it’s boundary conditions
What are the response times of the climate system components? A,H,C,L,B
Atmosphere- days to weeks due to large compressibility
Hydrosphere- weeks to months in upper mixed layer to centuries or millennia in the deep ocean
Cryosphere- from seasonal to hundreds of years
Lithosphere- has the longest response time
Biosphere- multiple response time
What is meant by a feedback mechanism?
Feedback is a process or mechanism that amplifies or diminishes a change in the system
What represents a positive and negative feedback mechanism?
Positive feedback- higher temp yields less snow area yields less surface albedo yields more absorbed radiation yields more energy balance yields higher temp
Negative feedback- higher temp yields less outgoing long wave radiation yields less energy balance yields less temp
What are external and internal forcings?
External forcings- external system influences the internal system.
Ex: solar radiation (primary) and gravity
Internal forcings- forcings within the system.
Ex: chaotic weather variations, ENSO, other air-sea interactions
What are forced and free variations?
Forced variations- changes in the external forcing such as diurnal variations
Free variations- changes in the internal system due to instabilities such as generating cyclonic disturbances
How do we know and study the state of the climate system?
Climate state is studied through a set of averages over the ensemble completed with a higher moment statistics such as variances with a description of the state of the external system.
