Climate and climate change:-

Even from distant space, it is obvious that Earth is the only habitable planet in our solar system.
More than 70% of its surface is a welcoming blue, the area covered by life sustaining oceans. The
remaining 30%, the land, is partly blanketed in green, darker in forested regions and lighter in
regions where grass or shrubs predominate.

Earth’s favourable climate enabled life to evolve on our planet. Climate is a broad composite of the
average condition of a region, measured by its temperature, amount of rainfall or snowfall, snow
and ice cover, wind direction and strength, as well as other factors. Climate specifically applies to
longer-term changes (years and longer), in contrast to the shorter fluctuations that last hours, days,
or weeks and are referred to as weather. Although we take Earth’s habitability for granted,climate
can change over time, and with it can change the degree to which life is possible, especially in
vulnerable regions. During the several hundred years in which humans have been making scientific
observations of climate, actual changes have been relatively small. Even so, climatic changes
significant to human life have occurred. One striking example is the advances of valley glaciers that
overran mountain farms and even some small villages in the European Alps and the mountains of
Norway a few centuries ago because of a small cooling of climate. Those glaciers have since
retreated to higher positions. Scientific studies reveal that these historical changes in climate are tiny
in comparison with the much larger changes that happened earlier in Earth’s history. For example, at
times in the distant past ice covered much of the region that is now the Sahara Desert, and trees
flourished in what are now Antarctica and Greenland.

CLIMATE SYSTEM:-
Earth’s climate system, consisting of air, water, ice, land, and vegetation. At the most basic level,
changes in these components through time are analyzed in terms of cause and effect, or, in the
words used by climate scientists, forcing and response. The term “forcing” refers to factors that drive
or cause change; the responses are the climatic changes that result. Air, water, ice, land, and
vegetation are the major components of the climate system, as well as processes at work within the
climate system, such as precipitation, evaporation, and winds. These processes extend from the
warm tropics to the cold polar regions and from the Sun in outer space down into Earth’s
atmosphere, deep into its oceans, and even beneath its bedrock surface.

The complexity of the of figure in the next page is simplified in the bottom part to provide an idea of
how the climate system works. The relatively small number of external factors shown on the bottom
left force (or drive) changes in the climate system, and the internal components of the climate
system respond by changing and interacting in many ways (bottom centre). The result of all these
interactions is a number of observed variations in climate that can be measured (bottom right). This
complexity can be thought of as the operation of a machine: the factors that drive climate change
are the input, the climate system is the machine, and the variations in climate are the output.

CLIMATE FORCING:-Three fundamental kinds of climate forcing exist in the natural world.
1)Tectonic processes generated by Earth’s internal heat affect its surface by means of
processes that alter the basic geography of Earth’s surface. Examples include the slow
movement of continents, the uplift of mountain ranges, and the opening and closing of
ocean basins. These processes operate very slowly over millions of years.
2)Earth-orbital changes result from variations in Earth’s orbit around the Sun. These changes
alter the amount of solar radiation (sunlight and other energy) received on Earth by season
and by latitude (from the warm, low-latitude tropics to the cold, high-latitude poles). Orbital
changes occur over tens to hundreds of thousands of years
3)Changes in the strength of the Sun also affect the amount of solar radiation arriving on
Earth. Example. The strength of the Sun has slowly increased throughout the 4.55 Byr of
Earth’s existence.
A fourth factor capable of influencing climate, but not in a strict sense part of the natural climate
system, is the effect of humans on climate, referred to as anthropogenic forcing. This forcing is an
unintended by-product of agricultural, industrial, and other human activities, and it occurs mainly by
way of additions to the atmosphere of materials such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse
gases, sulfate particles, and soot.

CLIMATE SYSTEM RESPONSE:-

The components of Earth’s climate system vary widely: global mean and regional
temperatures, the extent of ice of various kinds, the amounts of rainfall and snowfall, the
strength and direction of the wind, the circulation of water at the ocean’s surface and in its
depths, and the types and amounts of vegetation. Each of these parts of the climate system
responds to the factors that drive climate change with a characteristic response time, a
measure of the time it takes to react fully to the imposed change.
Consider the example shown in Figure a beaker of water above a Bunsen burner. The Bunsen burner
represents an external climate forcing (like the Sun’s radiation), and the water temperature is the
climatic response (such as the average temperature of Earth’s surface).When the burner is lit, it
begins to heat the water. The water in the beaker gradually warms toward a constant temperature,
and after a long interval it finally reaches and maintains an equilibrium value. The rate of warming
(shown beneath the Bunsen burner in Figure) is rapid at first but progressively slows as time passes.
It is intuitively reasonable that a response would naturally be faster when the water temperature is
still far from its eventual equilibrium state and would slow as it nears equilibrium.

The rate at which the water warms toward the equilibrium temperature is its response time, defined
in this case as the time it takes the water temperature to get halfway to the equilibrium value. The
water temperature rises the first 50% of the way toward equilibrium during the first response time,
but the same definition continues to apply later in the warming trend, as the water temperature
moves from 50% (1/2 ) to 75% (3/4 ) to 87.5% (7/8 ) to 93.75 (15/16 ) of the way toward equilibrium.
Each step takes one response time and moves the system half of the remaining way towards
equilibrium. This progression can be understood in terms of the amount of the total response that

remains after each step: 1/2 , 1/4, 1/8 , 1/16. This heating response has an exponential form. Each
part of the climate system has its own characteristic response time ranging from hours or days up to
thousands of years. The atmosphere has a very fast response time, and significant changes can occur
in just hours (daily cycles of heating and cooling). The land surface reacts more slowly, but it still
shows large heating and cooling changes on time scales of hours to days to weeks. Beach sand can
become too hot to walk on during just a single summer afternoon, but it takes longer to chill the
upper layer of soil in winter to the point where it freezes. Liquid water has a slower response time
than air or land because it can hold much more heat. The temperature response of shallow lakes or
of the wind-stirred upper 100 meters of the ocean is measured in weeks to months. This slower rate
is evident in the way lakes cool off seasonally but not as fast as the land does. For the deeper ocean
layers that lie remote from interactions with the atmosphere, response times can range from

decades to centuries or more for the deepest ocean. Although the meter-thick layer of sea ice on
polar oceans grows and melts in just months to years, thicker mountain glaciers react over longer
time spans of decades to centuries. Massive (kilometers-thick) ice sheets like the one now covering
the continent of Antarctica have the slowest response times in the climate system—many thousands
of years, as captured in the commonly used word “glacial.”

The concept also applies to vegetation, the organic part of the climate system. Unseasonable frosts
can kill leaves and grass overnight, and abnormally hard freezes can do the same to the woody tissue
of trees, responses measured in hours. On the other hand, seasonal spring greening of the landscape
and autumn loss of leafy green material take weeks or months to complete.

The concept also applies to vegetation, the organic part of the climate system. Unseasonable frosts
can kill leaves and grass overnight, and abnormally hard freezes can do the same to the woody tissue
of trees, responses measured in hours. On the other hand, seasonal spring greening of the landscape
and autumn loss of leafy green material take weeks or months to complete.

TIME SCALE OF FORCING VERSUS RESPONSE :-

The forcing is very slow in comparison with the response of the climate system. This case is
equivalent to increasing the flame of the Bunsen burner so slowly that the water temperature has no
problem keeping pace with the gradual application of more heat. If the changes in climate forcing
are very slow in comparison with the response time of the climate system, the system simply
passively tracks along with the forcing with no perceptible lag.
This case is typical of many climate changes that occur over the long tectonic time scales. For
example, continents can be slowly carried by plate tectonic processes toward higher or lower
latitudes at rates averaging about 1 degree of latitude (100 kilometers or 60 miles) per million years.
As the landmasses move toward lower latitudes, where incoming solar radiation is stronger, or
toward higher latitudes, where it is weaker, temperatures over the continents react to these slow
changes in solar heating with an imperceptibly tiny year-by-year response.

The forcing is fast in comparison with the climate system’s response. At the other extreme, the
response time of the climate system may be slower than the time scale of the changes in forcing . In
this case, there is little or no response to the climate forcing. This is equivalent to turning the Bunsen
burner on and off so quickly that the temperature of the water in the beaker has no time to
react.One example of this extreme case is a total solar eclipse, which blocks Earth’s only source of
external heating for less than an hour. Air temperatures cool slightly during that brief interval, but
then rise again. Volcanic eruptions are another example, such as the 1991 summer explosion of
Mount Pinatubo in the Philippine Islands. Fine volcanic particles produced by that eruption blocked
part of the Sun’s radiation for several months and caused Earth’s average temperature to fall by
0.5°C.

The time scales of forcing and climate response are similar. Consider a different experiment with the
Bunsen burner and the beaker of water. This time, the Bunsen burner (again the source of climate
forcing) is abruptly turned on, left on awhile,turned off, left off awhile, turned on again, and so on
(Figure 1-7C). These changes cause the water to heat up, cool off, heat up again, and so on. The
water temperature responds by cycling back and forth between two different equilibrium values,
one at the cold extreme with the flame off and one at the warm extreme with the flame on. But the
intervals of heating and cooling do not last long enough to allow the water enough time to reach
either of these equilibrium temperatures .
In this two cases shown in Figures show that the frequency with which the flame is turned on
and off has a direct effect on the size of the response of the water temperature. Both examples
use the same equilibrium values (cold and warm) for the water temperature and the same
position of the Bunsen burner relative to the beaker of water. The only difference is the length
of time the flame is left on or off. If the flame is switched on and off far more rapidly than the
response time of the water, the water temperature has less time to reach the equilibrium
temperatures (hot or cold) and the size of the response is smaller. But if the flame stays on or off
for longer intervals, the temperature of the water has time to reach larger values nearer the full
equilibrium states .

In the real world, climate forcing rarely acts in the on-or-off way implied by the preceding
examples. Instead, changes commonly occur in smooth, continuous cycles. If we again use the
Bunsen burner concept, this situation is analogous to keeping the burner flame (the climate
forcing) on at all times but slowly and cyclically varying its intensity. The result is cycles of
warming and cooling of the water that lag behind the shifts in the amount of heat applied.

Familiar examples of this kind of forcing and response exist in daily and seasonal changes. In the
northern hemisphere, the summer Sun is highest in the sky and therefore strongest at summer
solstice on June 21, but the hottest air temperatures are not reached until July over the land and
late August over the ocean. Similarly, the coldest winter days occur in January or February, long
after the time of the weakest Sun at winter solstice on December 21. Even during a single day,
the strongest solar heating occurs near noon, but the warmest temperatures are not reached
until the afternoon, hours later.
FEEDBACKS IN THE CLIMATE SYSTEM :-

Another important kind of interaction in the climate system is the operation of feedbacks, processes
that alter climate changes that are already underway, either by amplifying them (positive feedbacks)
or by suppressing them (negative feedbacks).

Assume that some external factor (again, perhaps a change in the strength of radiation from the
Sun) causes Earth’s climate to change. That change will consist of many different responses among
the various internal components of the climate system. The changes in of these components will
then further perturb climate through the action of feedbacks.

Positive feedbacks produce additional climate change beyond that triggered by the factor that
initiates the change. For example, a decrease in the amount of heat energy sent to Earth by the Sun
would allow snow and ice to spread across high-latitude regions that had not previously been
covered. Because snow and ice reflect far more sunlight (heat energy) than do bare ground or open
ocean water, an increase in their extent should decrease the amount of heat taken up by Earth’s
surface and further cool the climate in those regions.

The positive feedback process also works in the opposite direction. If more energy from the Sun
arrives and causes climate to warm, high-latitude snow and ice will retreat and allow more sunlight
to be absorbed. The result will be further climatic warming. Positive feedback acts as an amplifier,
regardless of the direction of change.

Negative feedbacks work in the opposite sense, by muting climate changes. When an initial climate
change is triggered, some components of Earth’s climate system respond in such a way as to reduce
the initial change.