Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Dec 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmpp31b..01b&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #PP31B-01
Mathematics
Logic
1620 Climate Dynamics (3309), 3099 General Or Miscellaneous, 3344 Paleoclimatology, 4215 Climate And Interannual Variability (3309)
Scientific paper
The study of Earth System History is characterized by substantial innovation and excitement directed toward addressing the critical issue of understanding a changing planet and promoting new insights into the evolution of the Earth and its resources. Much of this innovation reflects the considerable expansion in the availability and quality of observations, particularly from the oceans, and the development and application of numerical models of the ocean-atmosphere-land-ice system. The key challenge within the Earth sciences is to develop a robust understanding of this coupled earth system and then to develop a predictive capability for natural variability and global change. Our capabilities are limited, among other things, by the fact that the instrumented record is too short to provide a strong sense of the character of change and the sensitivity of the Earth system. For this reason, modern observations are inadequate to demonstrate the capability of climate models to simulate conditions very different from the present day. The importance of Earth system history, and the ocean record in particular, stems from unique capabilities to: (1) assess the temporal and spatial characteristics of system variability, (2) define the nature of Earth sensitivity to a large number of forcing factors, including changes in ocean circulation and in greenhouse gases, (3) examine the integrated climatic, chemical and biologic response of the Earth system to a variety of spatial and temporal perturbations, (4) validate the predictions of numerical models for conditions very different from the present day, and (5) assess the rates of change associated with the evolution of the Earth and its components. Earth system history provides a great diversity of examples yielding a remarkable opportunity to develop insights into a broad range of issues and problems associated with the evolution of our planet. Three examples provide a focus for discussion. First, a careful analysis of climate proxies over the last millennia demonstrates the distinctive character of climate changes over the last half of the 20th century. Second, Earth system history provides a series of known forcing factors or perturbations that can be utilized to examine potential changes in climate. For example, known variations in freshwater fluxes in polar latitudes due to modest ice sheet melt provide a remarkable opportunity to examine the sensitivity of the ocean circulation to potential future perturbations. Third, High resolution simulation of European climates during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (approximately 30,000 to 50,000 years ago at the time of transition from Neanderthalers to modern humans) permits careful model-data comparison, and therefore a test of the sensitivity of climate models to external forcing. In the process, it focuses our attention on the importance of the oceanic record. Each of these examples demonstrates the importance of natural variability in deciphering past and future climate change.
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