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Climate variability includes all the variations in the climate that last longer than individual weather events, whereas the term climate change only refers to those variations that persist for a longer period of time, typically decades or more. In addition to the general meaning in which "climate change" may refer to any time in Earth's history, the term is commonly used to describe the current climate change now underway. In the time since the Industrial Revolution, the climate has increasingly been affected by human activities that are causing global warming and climate change.
Numerical climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the important drivers of climate, including atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the climate system to projections of future climate. Climate models may also be qualitative models and also narratives, largely descriptive, of possible futures.
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an irregular periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics. The warming phase of the sea temperature is known as El Niño and the cooling phase as La Niña. The Southern Oscillation is the accompanying atmospheric component, coupled with the sea temperature change: El Niño is accompanied by high air surface pressure in the tropical western Pacific and La Niña with low air surface pressure there. The two periods last several months each and typically occur every few years with varying intensity per period.
The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a weather phenomenon over the North Atlantic Ocean of fluctuations in the difference of atmospheric pressure at sea level (SLP) between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High. Through fluctuations in the strength of the Icelandic Low and the Azores High, it controls the strength and direction of westerly winds and location of storm tracks across the North Atlantic.
This glossary of climate change is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to climate change, global warming, and related topics.
Sea surface temperature (SST), or ocean surface temperature, is the water temperature close to the ocean's surface. The exact meaning of surface varies according to the measurement method used, but it is between 1 millimetre (0.04 in) and 20 metres (70 ft) below the sea surface. Air masses in the Earth's atmosphere are highly modified by sea surface temperatures within a short distance of the shore. Localized areas of heavy snow can form in bands downwind of warm water bodies within an otherwise cold air mass. Warm sea surface temperatures are known to be a cause of tropical cyclogenesis over the Earth's oceans. Tropical cyclones can also cause a cool wake, due to turbulent mixing of the upper 30 metres (100 ft) of the ocean. SST changes diurnally, like the air above it, but to a lesser degree. There is less SST variation on breezy days than on calm days. In addition, ocean currents such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), can affect SST's on multi-decadal time scales, a major impact results from the global thermohaline circulation, which affects average SST significantly throughout most of the world's oceans.
The Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) is a robust, recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude Pacific basin. The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean, north of 20°N. Over the past century, the amplitude of this climate pattern has varied irregularly at interannual-to-interdecadal time scales. There is evidence of reversals in the prevailing polarity of the oscillation occurring around 1925, 1947, and 1977; the last two reversals corresponded with dramatic shifts in salmon production regimes in the North Pacific Ocean. This climate pattern also affects coastal sea and continental surface air temperatures from Alaska to California.
The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is the University of Miami's academic and research institution for the study of oceanography and the atmospheric sciences.
The Walker circulation, also known as the Walker cell, is a conceptual model of the air flow in the tropics in the lower atmosphere (troposphere). According to this model, parcels of air follow a closed circulation in the zonal and vertical directions. This circulation, which is roughly consistent with observations, is caused by differences in heat distribution between ocean and land. It was discovered by Gilbert Walker. In addition to motions in the zonal and vertical direction the tropical atmosphere also has considerable motion in the meridional direction as part of, for example, the Hadley Circulation.
The Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) is the largest element of the intraseasonal variability in the tropical atmosphere. It was discovered in 1971 by Roland Madden and Paul Julian of the American National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). It is a large-scale coupling between atmospheric circulation and tropical deep atmospheric convection. Unlike a standing pattern like the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Madden–Julian oscillation is a traveling pattern that propagates eastward, at approximately 4 to 8 m/s, through the atmosphere above the warm parts of the Indian and Pacific oceans. This overall circulation pattern manifests itself most clearly as anomalous rainfall.
This is a list of meteorology topics. The terms relate to meteorology, the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting.
Earth's climate system is a complex system having five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. Climate is the statistical characterization of the climate system, representing the average weather, typically over a period of 30 years, and is determined by a combination of processes in the climate system, such as ocean currents and wind patterns. Circulation in the atmosphere and oceans is primarily driven by solar radiation and transports heat from the tropical regions to regions that receive less energy from the Sun. The water cycle also moves energy throughout the climate system. In addition, different chemical elements, necessary for life, are constantly recycled between the different components.
The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), also known as Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV), is the theorized variability of the sea surface temperature (SST) of the North Atlantic Ocean on the timescale of several decades.
Polar amplification is the phenomenon that any change in the net radiation balance tends to produce a larger change in temperature near the poles than in the planetary average. This is commonly referred to as the ratio of polar warming to tropical warming. On a planet with an atmosphere that can restrict emission of longwave radiation to space, surface temperatures will be warmer than a simple planetary equilibrium temperature calculation would predict. Where the atmosphere or an extensive ocean is able to transport heat polewards, the poles will be warmer and equatorial regions cooler than their local net radiation balances would predict. The poles will experience the most cooling when the global-mean temperature is lower relative to a reference climate; alternatively, the poles will experience the greatest warming when the global-mean temperature is higher.
This is a list of climate change topics.
Axel Timmermann is a German climate physicist and oceanographer with an interest in climate dynamics, human migration, dynamical systems' analysis, ice-sheet modeling and sea level. He served a co-author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report and a lead author of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. His research has been cited over 18,000 times and has an h-index of 70 and i10-index of 161. In 2017, he became a Distinguished Professor at Pusan National University and the founding Director of the Institute for Basic Science Center for Climate Physics. In December 2018, the Center began to utilize a 1.43-petaflop Cray XC50 supercomputer, named Aleph, for climate physics research.
Cyclonic Niño is a climatological phenomenon that has been observed in climate models where tropical cyclone activity is increased. Increased tropical cyclone activity mixes ocean waters, introducing cooling in the upper layer of the ocean that quickly dissipates and warming in deeper layers that lasts considerably more, resulting in a net warming of the ocean.
Jean O'Brien Dickey (1945–2018) was a pioneering geodesist and particle physicist with expertise in Earth rotation.
Pacific Meridional Mode (PMM) is a climate mode in the North Pacific. In its positive state, it is characterized by the coupling of weaker trade winds in the northeast Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Baja California with decreased evaporation over the ocean, thus increasing sea surface temperatures (SST); and the reverse during its negative state. This coupling develops during the winter months and spreads southwestward towards the equator and the central and western Pacific during spring, until it reaches the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), which tends to shift north in response to a positive PMM.
Ocean dynamical thermostat is a physical mechanism through which changes in the mean radiative forcing influence the gradients of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and the strength of the Walker circulation. Increased radiative forcing (warming) is more effective in the western Pacific than in the eastern where the upwelling of cold water masses damps the temperature change. This increases the east-west temperature gradient and strengthens the Walker circulation. Decreased radiative forcing (cooling) has the opposite effect.
References
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- 1 2 3 "Amy Clement". people.miami.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-06.
- ↑ Walsh, Bryan (2009-07-24). "In a Warming World, Cloudy Days Are a Boon". Time. ISSN 0040-781X . Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ↑ "University of Miami Sstudy Rethinks the Ocean's Role in Pacific Climate | Ocean Leadership". oceanleadership.org. Archived from the original on 2018-11-26. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- 1 2 "Amy C. Clement - Honors Program". Honors Program. Retrieved 2018-11-18.
- ↑ "Amy C. Clement - Honors Program". Honors Program. Retrieved 2018-11-06.
- ↑ Clement, A. C.; Seager, R.; Cane, M. A. (1999). "Orbital controls on the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and the tropical climate". Paleoceanography. 14 (4): 441–456. Bibcode:1999PalOc..14..441C. doi: 10.1029/1999pa900013 . ISSN 0883-8305. S2CID 20332855.
- ↑ Clement, Amy. "The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation without a role for ocean circulation" (PDF). Science Magazine.
- ↑ Clement, Amy (1996). "An Ocean Dynamical Thermostat". Journal of Climate. 9 (9): 2190–2196. Bibcode:1996JCli....9.2190C. doi: 10.1175/1520-0442(1996)009<2190:AODT>2.0.CO;2 . JSTOR 26201402.
- ↑ Clement, Amy C.; Burgman, Robert; Norris, Joel R. (2009-07-24). "Observational and Model Evidence for Positive Low-Level Cloud Feedback". Science. 325 (5939): 460–464. Bibcode:2009Sci...325..460C. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.173.2536 . doi:10.1126/science.1171255. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 19628865. S2CID 1787686.
- ↑ "List of Fellows". American Meteorological Society. Retrieved 2018-11-18.
- ↑ "Clement - Honors Program". Honors Program. Retrieved 2018-11-18.
- ↑ "Annual Yanai Lecture | Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences". atmos.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ↑ "Amy Clement's Research Group". Amy Clement's Research Group. Retrieved 2018-11-06.