ENVS 2270 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: General Idea, Carbon Cycle, Water Cycle
Document Summary
In order to make predictions about future climate, we have to come up with some kind of idea about how much greenhouse gas will be in the atmosphere . through scenarios, or rcp. Then we can input what we come up with into the climate models. Take the planet, and break it up into grid cells (horizontal grid - latitude-longitude) (vertical grid (height or pressure - up into the atmosphere, and down into the oceans: a whole bunch of stacked grid cells. Then we attempt to model everything to do with climate within each grid cell (atmospheric composition, water cycle, human contributions, carbon cycle, ecosystems, land use/cover, etc. ) Then we also need to know how the climate in each grid cell interacts with one another. In the 1990s we mapped 19 levels in the atmosphere (mapped larger area), and 20 levels in the ocean (5 km down)