Climate Change

eBook (pdf)

(0)

Donner la première évaluation

Earth's climate is always changing. As the debate over the Earth's climate has grown, the term 'climate change&apos...

CHF67.90

Download est disponible immédiatement

eBook (pdf)

Description

Earth's climate is always changing. As the debate over the Earth's climate has grown, the term 'climate change' has come to refer primarily to changes we've seen over recent years and those that are predicted to be coming, mainly as a result of human behavior. Climate Change: Observed Impacts on Planet Earth, Second Edition, serves as a broad, accessible guide to the science behind this often political and heated debate by providing scientific detail and evidence in language that is clear to both the climatologist and the non-specialist.

The book contains 35 chapters on all scientific aspects of climate change, written by the world's authority of each particular subject. It collects the latest information on all of these topics in one volume. In this way, readers can make connections between the various topics covered in the book, leading to new ways of solving problems and looking at related issues. The book also contains major references and details for further research and understanding on all issues related to climate change, giving a clear indication of a looming crisis in global warming and climate change.

Provides an up-to-date account of the current understanding of climate change and global warming
Includes 23 updated chapters and 12 new chapters
Includes coverage on modeling climate change, geological history of climate change, and on engineering aspects of climate change
Written by the world's leading experts on the issues related to climate change
Earth's climate is always changing. As the debate over the Earth's climate has grown, the term "climate change" has come to refer primarily to changes we've seen over recent years and those that are predicted to be coming, mainly as a result of human behavior. Climate Change: Observed Impacts on Planet Earth, Second Edition, serves as a broad, accessible guide to the science behind this often political and heated debate by providing scientific detail and evidence in language that is clear to both the climatologist and the non-specialist.

Provides an up-to-date account of the current understanding of climate change and global warming
Includes 23 updated chapters and 12 new chapters
Includes coverage on modeling climate change, geological history of climate change, and on engineering aspects of climate change
Written by the world's leading experts on the issues related to climate change

Échantillon de lecture
Chapter 1 Climate Change Through Earth's History
Jan Zalasiewicz, and Mark Williams Department of Geology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK Abstract

For at least 3.8 billion years, the Earth has possessed a climate system that continuously maintained a surface environment conducive to life, with liquid water at the surface, interchanging with various amounts of polar ice. The early Earth was warm, perhaps with higher concentrations of greenhouse gases compensating for a solar output smaller than present. Intermittent ice ages began -2.5 billion years ago, perhaps associated with oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere and reduction in methane levels; these included more or less worldwide 'Snowball Earth' events, with ice extending to low latitudes. From the beginning of the Phanerozoic, the Earth has alternated between 'icehouse states' - albeit of lesser severity than the 'Snowball' events - and 'greenhouse states', such as that of the Mesozoic Era. The Earth is currently in an icehouse state marked by geologically closely spaced fluctuations of climate, largely paced by astronomical variations and amplified by changes in greenhouse gas levels. The present interglacial state of the Holocene is very likely to soon attain levels of climatic warmth not seen for several million years, because of human modification of climate drivers, notably greenhouse gases. Keywords
Anthropocene; Climate; Glaciations; Palaeoclimate; Quaternary Chapter Outline

Introduction 3
Climate Models 4
Long-Term Climate Trends 5
Early Climate History 6
Phanerozoic Glaciations 7
The Mesozoic - Early Cenozoic Greenhouse 8
Development of the Cenozoic Icehouse 9
Astronomical Modulation of Climate 9
Milankovitch Cyclicity in Quaternary (Pleistocene) Climate History 10
Quaternary Sub-Milankovitch Cyclicity 11
The Holocene 12
Climate of the Anthropocene 12
Conclusions 13

References 13

Introduction
Earth's climate is now changing in response to an array of anthropogenic perturbations, notably the release of greenhouse gases; an understanding of the rate, mode and scale of this change is now of literally vital importance to society. There is currently intense study of current and historical (i.e. measured) changes in both perceived climate drivers and the Earth system response. Such studies typically lead to climate models that, in linking proposed causes and effects, are aimed at allowing prediction of climate evolution over an annual to centennial scale. However, the Earth system is complex and imperfectly understood, not least as regards resolving the effect of multiple feedbacks in the system and of assessing the scale and importance of leads, lags and thresholds ('tipping points') in climate change. There is thus a need to set modern climate studies within a realistic context by examining the preserved history of the Earth's climate in the rock succession. Such study cannot provide precise replicas of the unplanned global experiment that is now underway (for the sum of human actions represents a geological novelty). However, it is providing an increasingly detailed picture of the nature, scale, rate and causes of past climate change and of its wider effects [1], regarding, for instance, sea level and biota. Imperfect as it is, it provides an indispensable context for modern climate studies, not least as a provision of ground truth for computer models (see below) of former and present climate. Asp

Contenu

PART 1: A GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF CLIMATE CHANGE