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Climate--The average weather over years and longer…
Chapter 1 frontispiece. Satellite view looking east from Patagonia over
southern Argentina and the South Atlantic Ocean
E.A. Mathez, 2009, Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming
and Our Energy Future, Columbia University Press. Source: NASA
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ocean: 1000x heat,
50x carbon
Chapter 1 frontispiece. Satellite view looking east from Patagonia over
southern Argentina and the South Atlantic Ocean
E.A. Mathez, 2009, Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming
and Our Energy Future, Columbia University Press. Source: NASA
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Figure 1.1. The dynamic climate system
E.A. Mathez, 2009, Climate Change: The Science of Global
Warming and Our Energy Future, Columbia University Press.
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Table 1.1. Different timescales of weather and climate
daily
warm days, cool nights
3-7 days
weather events, e.g., passages of fronts
yearly
seasons
2-7 years
El Niño events (ENSO)
1-3 decades
oscillations in atmospheric circulation patterns, e.g.,
North Atlantic
centuries
multi-century cold and warm periods
104 - 105 years
Milankovitch cycles
> 106 years
positions of continents, changes in atmospheric
composition, changes in solar luminosity
E.A. Mathez, 2009, Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and
Our Energy Future, Columbia University Press. Source: Christy et al., 2006
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Figure 1.2. The Keeling curve
E.A. Mathez, 2009, Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future,
Columbia University Press. Source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography CO 2 Program
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Figure 1.3. The change in the average global land-surface air
temperature relative to the 1961–1990 mean temperature
E.A. Mathez, 2009, Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our
Energy Future, Columbia University Press. Source: Trenbreth et al., 2007