Climate System ModelingKevin E. Trenberth "It is widely recognized that human activities are transforming the global environment. What will be the changes in climate caused by anthropogenic influences and how do these compare with natural variations? To address these questions there is an urgent need to understand and model the global climate system effectively. A central role of climate system models will be to help determine possible impacts and help guide possible future policies. First published in 1992, Climate System Modeling provides a thorough grounding in climate dynamics and the issues involved in predicting climate change. It not only discusses the primary concepts involved but also the mathematical, physical, chemical and biological basis for the component models and the sources of uncertainty, the assumptions made and the approximations introduced. Climate system models go beyond climate models to include all aspects of the climate system: the atmosphere, the ocean, the cryosphere (including snow, sea ice, and glaciers), the biosphere and terrestrial ecosystems, other land surface processes and additional parts of the hydrosphere including rivers, and all the complex interactions between these components. The biogeochemical cycles in both the atmosphere and the ocean are dealt with in detail, potentially allowing the carbon cycle, for instance, to be treated with some veracity. Instead of projecting and specifying what future atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane might be, the goal of these models is to deal comprehensively with the carbon cycle and predict the future evolution of greenhouse gas concentrations, as well as the impact of those changes on the physical climate."--Publisher's description. |
