Science of Climate Change

Science of Climate Change

1. Climate Archives

The study of the past, which is paleoclimate, is done through the various climate archives using different time scales to protect the climate, which includes geologic and biologic sources that preserve evidence of past changes in the environment. They hold climate changes information on the Earth’s history (Sep, 2018). Through climate proxies, which are the substances or features using a variety of physical and chemical methods, scientists can get the information they want about the climate. One crucial aspect of climate archives is that they help in understanding the dynamics involved in regulating Earth’s atmosphere. These archives also enable in explaining the existence of ecosystems and provides information that helps in future climate change predictability (Sep, 2018). This helps the world to become prepared for various catastrophic weather changes scenarios such as Tsunamis, severe climate changes, causing adverse conditions such as drought, enabling the mitigation of many deaths, and saving lives. When the study of individual proxies is combined, they provide regional and global climate change through time.

The data available is preserved in marine aquatic and terrestrial settings from the world, with however variation in time and its analytical resolution consisting of centennial to millennial. In contrast, others offer relatively short records resolving the monthly to interannual climate variability (Bruckner, n.d.). The geologic archives mainly provide the most extended timescale dating to millions of years. They consist of sediments deposited in layers either in oceans or land. They offer climate information regarding the past enabling the reconstruction and understanding of the mechanisms regarding climate change. Biologic archives, however, provide a short time scale, mostly thousands of years, to allow the extraction of relevant information in the study of changes in temperature and precipitation on a local level (Bruckner, n.d.). For instance study of changes in the thickness of the tree rings one of the biologic proxies characterizes the seasonal and annual variations of availability of water in the growing seasons of the tree (Bruckner, n.d.). Thus its analysis provides vital information that helps in the reconstruction of annual variability in moisture and temperature of recent years.

The climate data has a challenge arising from its array of variations in sources. The proxies vary in time and resolutions and have gaps in their data space and time, which scientists cannot account for to give a distinctive explanation of climate change (Sep 2018). Also, the data collected provides information mainly on a locality and mostly does not provide the aspects of changes in weather conditions at the time, which vary from one region to the other.

However, the different time scale of the climate archives affects the climate change interpretation due to varying information. Longer time scale through the study of sediments provides data on significant shifts of climate change through the ice age, providing a big picture of the trends in changes in climatic. At the same time, the short time scales variation, such as changes of temperature, are also present in the long time scale variations(Sep, 2018). The coexistence of simultaneous differences makes the possibility of unraveling climate changes using the climates archives and traditional methods of data extraction alone complicated.

Due to the complexities involved in climate change and the different locations and climate conditions, data inferencing on climate models needs to account for the differences in time scale and variations to make a conclusive argument about climate change (Bruckner, n.d.). The existing two differences have different approaches but share a common goal of providing many insights, and one cannot exist without the other.

2. Timing based on sedimentary archives and radiometric dating techniques.

Reconstructing environments and timing based on climate archives of geologic relies on the biological evidence obtained from various disciplines such as the paleoecology, which classifies sediments on their time scale. The recent sediment in the time scale in these techniques is considered to form at the top of the sediment rock (Matthews, 2012). However, scientists today dispute this argument on taxonomical bases of biology relating to events such as volcanic eruptions and polar magnetic reversal on the formation of the sediment. Also, the approach fails to incorporate the use of the hypothesis testing approach in testing for the validity and credibility of their climate model data (Matthews, 2012). The method mainly uses descriptive data in explaining events such as the Glacial Lake Agassiz explanation during the late Pleistocene in relating it to the cooling of the early Holocene in the North Atlantic (Matthews, 2012). The geologic data vary from one region to the other, and thus use of a specific geologic proxy to generalize the influences of climate change gives a misinformed interpretation of climate change. Therefore, the technique has uncertainties providing contradicting climate models data correlations.

Scientists use a more sophisticated method of Radiometric dating (Matthews, 2012) due to these uncertainties. And unpredictability relating to different time scales and resolutions. Different from the geological time scale of sediments, the approach assigns ages to organic materials, including the geologic and the biologic archives. The period is obtained from  studying radioactive isotopes in fossils through its measure in determining the radiocarbon age of the organism. However, it has a challenge resulting from contamination of the carbon residue, which may provide the wrong carbon age of the fossil (Matthews, 2012). The techniques offer a chronological account of the changes in the climate archives proxy, such as the annual layers of glacier ice, providing valuable information on atmospheric and climate changes.

The use of the two techniques has gained popularity due to the need for precision and accurate data. The geological approach provides a time scale on fossils. In contrast, the dating technique provides more information regarding the exact age of the relic through the various methods of creating a chronological (Matthews, 2012). Also, the two have their limitations, and thus none that can become utilized on its own and must incorporate the two to achieve an enlightened understanding of climate change.

3. Atmospheric and oceanic systems

The two systems are considered as the largest reservoirs of water in the Earth’s hydrologic cycle. The atmospheric system controls the weather and the climate of a given region. It consists of a mixture of two gases, namely Nitrogen and Oxygen, which have different responsibilities. However, the atmospheres have various distinctive layers with distinctive characteristics and properties in pressure, temperature, and chemical composition. The closest layer to the surface of the Earth is called the troposphere with an altitude of 10 to 15 km and mainly contains the Earth’s water vapor (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016). The stratosphere follows it, but there exists a tropopause layer as a boundary between the two, whereby the temperatures decrease as one goes close to the border. The third layer is the mesosphere. And stratopause boundary between it and the stratosphere. While the highest layer is the thermosphere and a mesopause boundary between it and the mesosphere (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016). The ocean systems include mainly al the water body masses on the surface of the other, primarily involving the various oceans in the world.

However, the two systems’ interaction derives from the weather and climate changes in the atmosphere through a variety of aspects such as heat change, salt, water, and the momentum between the two systems. The interaction of the two is mainly through the energy balance factor resulting from the wind blowing from the oceans transferring energy to surface layers (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016), driving ocean currents. Moving energy through the evaporation of water vapor taking away heat from the ocean, which condenses in the atmosphere to form rain, also removing heat from the atmosphere.

The air circulation in the atmosphere generates the aspects of the two systems interaction resulting in the coreolis effect of interaction. The circulation patterns are complicated as a result of earth rotation caused by the coreolis effect. The effects make anybody on the earth surface turn clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere with negligible effects at the equator. The resultant effects of the coreolis are the fact that the Earth rotation is an outward force from under the ocean systems (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016). The effects deflect winds causing the cyclonic winds in low-pressure zones and the anticyclone winds in the high atmospheric zones. However,  climatic zones depend on latitudes and the elevation of the lands, thus resulting in deserts in the mid-latitudes. As a result of these changes, there is the summer and winter. The Northern hemispheres bring too much winter in the United States of America. Also, the coreolis effect and the wind systems can explain the el Niño causing tornadoes in North America and flooding in Peru and drought and fires in Indonesia and Australia (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016)  that occurs every 2-7 years.

Another interaction effect if the formation of belts through the circulation of air. The wind blowing cells resulting in the convectional cells blow the equator upwards and back to the surface in mid-latitudes forms the Hadley cells with those blowing upwards in high latitudes. Downwards air to the poles creates the polar cells, and the blowing air between the cells is called the Ferrell cells.

4. How Atmosphere stores and releases water vapor.

Water, which is the significant allocation of the two systems, is stored in the atmosphere as water vapor and released as rain back to the surfaces and oceans systems. Water has the most significant percentage of heat capacity enabling it to absorb a lot of heat from the sun in large amounts (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016). The water in the oceans’ system is then transferred to the atmosphere through the latent heat of vaporization. The water from the oceans turns into vapor, which is released to the atmosphere. At different temperatures, water vapor in the atmosphere is saturated to form clouds at low relative humidity storing the water vapor as clouds. However, when the saturation levels are high as a result of relative humidity reaching 100%, the water vapor is then turned into a liquid through the latent heat of vaporization in the atmosphere, releasing the heat as precipitation (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016). Similarly, the water vapor may condense and become released as ice or snow through the latent heat of fusion.

However, the offshore weather systems on the pacific coast end up dumping their moisture on the westward side of the sierra-Nevada mountain, similarly with the formation of little moisture reaching the eastward side due to the adiabatic effect changes. These changes arise when the circulating air undergoes no differences in terms of gaining or losing heat from the surrounding. The air expands and dropping its temperatures, thus reaching the eastward side as lee wave winds, which are dry with no moisture or little moisture.  The rising ocean air moves with the blowing winds over its surface, dragging a current of water over the surface. The oceans’ currents blow similarly to the winds but differ in the aspect that they become deflected when they experience a landmass diverting their flow (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016). At the middle latitudes, they tend to flow eastwards in a clockwise direction to the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise to the southern hemisphere (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016). These easterly winds become deflected and start circulating back to the high latitudes occurring parallel to the coast along the margins of the continents. The parallel flow makes the winds not to lose water as they flow towards the land, explaining why they reach on the Westside of sierra –Nevada when they are moist since they do not change their moisture content. However, after experiencing the mountain, the winds flow upwards rising to change their latitudes, which in turn makes them expand and loose temperatures (“Ocean-Atmosphere System,” 2016). The loss of temperature in the winds upward the mountain. However, it does not change heat, but the water content is lost in the atmosphere, and by reaching the leeward side of the mountain is water content is almost lost, or the winds are arid.

References

Bruckner, M. Paleoclimatology: Climate Proxies. Retrieved from https://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/proxies/paleoclimate.html

Matthews, J. A. (Ed.). (2012). The SAGE Handbook of Environmental Change: Volume 1: Approaches, Evidence and Causes Volume 2: Human Impacts and Responses. Sage.

Ocean-Atmosphere System. (2016). Retrieved from https://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/Natural_Disasters/oceanatmos.htm

Sep. (2018). Climate Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/climate-science/