Week 9 Flashcards
Climate model
Defined as a mathematical representation of the climate system based on phyical, biological and chemical principles
Earth’s climate arises from interaction of 5 major components
Atmosphere, land, ocean , ice and biosphere
Climate system changes naturally
Due to solar radiation and the ways it changes daily and annualy etc
Atmospheric gases absorbing radiation
Natural greenhouse effect
Carbon dioxide
Very absorbing of terrestrial radiation- transparent to radiation coming from the sun
Main drivers of climate change
Aerosols, Clouds, Ozone, SWR (short wave radiation), Green houses gases and large aerosols ( LWR)
Surface albedo changes (SWR)
Ocean colour, wave height, ice/snow cover, vegetation changes
Main drivers of climate change diagram
See lecture slides
OLR
Outgoing longwave radiation
Positive feedback
Output acts to enhance input
Negative feedback
Output acts to reduce input
Water vapour in atmosphere feedback
Absorbs radiation from the earth which warms - positive feedback
3 groups of tipping elements
Melting ice bodies
Changing circulation of the ocean and atmosphere
Threatened large scale ecosystems
Köppen climate classification
Divides climates into five main climate groups, with each group being divided based on patterns of seasonal precipitation and temperature.
Tipping elements
Changes can cause rapid changes to the climate systems
Interactions between drivers of the climate system
Vary with different spatial and time scales
Abbe (American Meteorologist)
Recognised meteorology is essentially the application of hydrodynamics and thermodynamics in the atmosphere and identified the system of mathematical equations that govern the evolution of the atmosphere.
Bjerknes (Norwegian Scientist)
Undertook more explicit analysis of the weather prediction problem from a scientific perspective; meteorology is an exact science ; weather can be predicted by solving systems of partial differential equations
Richardson (English mathematician)
Attempted a solution of the equations of motion (6-hour forecast after 2 years of calculations by hand)- ‘forecast factory’
ENIAC (1945)- (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
The first general purpose electronic computer commissioned by the US army to calculate dynamics of projectiles
First Global Circulation Models
3 pioneering climate models of the late 1960s, at GFDL, UCLA, and NCAR, were each built by a pair of scientists, one American and one Japanese
Carbon cycle and greenhouse effect
The carbon cycle affects carbon dioxide concentrationand thus the greenhouse effect, effects of dynamical processes onozone hole formation (the stratospheric polar vortex, stratospheric ice clouds), vegetation affects absorption of sunlight and evaporation from land surfaces
The climate modelling pyramid
A visual representation of the increasing complexity of climate models. It illustrates how different components of the Earth’s climate system are incorporated into models of varying complexity.
For the earth to have constant temperature:
The same amount of energy needs to radiate back (accounting for the fraction reflected) as heat radiation (thermal) which is determined by the earth’s temperature
