GEOG309 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Climate Change, Cryosphere, Normal Distribution

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Geography and Environmental Management
• Course: GEOG309
• Professor: Yuri Leonenko

Document Summary

Climate system composed of interactions btwn atmo, ice, ocean, land surface, and vegetation. Each of these components receives energy from the sun (participate in energy budget) Atmosphere volatile turbulent fluid, winds, clouds, transports heat, moisture, materials, etc: both weather and climate happen in atmosphere. Ocean ~70% of earth, liquid, high heat capacity, stores and moves heat, freshwater, chemicals: adds delay of 10-100 yrs to response time. Land wide variety of features, slopes, soils, vital in water and carbon cycles, ecosys. Ice large heat capacity, high albedo: ice-albedo feedback, source of freshwater, changes sea level. Defined by: temperature, humidity, precip"n, wind, pressure, etc. Can be measured and averaged over time. Changing all the time they"re functions of time. The difference btwn weather and climate is the time scale (i. e. , the precision) of the averaging: weather: atmo conditions over a short period of time, climate: atmo conditions over a long period of time. Climate change decades to centuries & beyond.