GEOSCI 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Arctic Ocean, Radiative Cooling
9 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
The Climate System continued
4/24/18
Review:
3 Big Questions:
1. What is climate change?
2. How does the climate system work?
3. What controls climate change?
*4 Key Points to Remember*
1. Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather on time scales greater
than 10 years
2. Climate change during the last 128 years is temporarily variable → complex system
3. Climate change is spatially heterogeneous
a. There are parts of our globe that are much more sensitive to climate change (i.e.
the poles)
4. Climate changes on many different time scales, from decades to millions of years
*How does the climate system work? Lecture Slideshow Slide #9
Energy from the SUN goes into the Earth (visible light)
→ Energy transformed and redistributed on Earth →
Energy from the Earth goes out to the atmosphere
(invisible)
•The type of light coming into the earth system (mainly
UV-vis) is different than that going out (IR)
•Plot below indicates that greenhouse gases are trapping
heat (IR), so we must add greenhouse gases to our simple
climate model
Lecture Slideshow Slide #22
