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Climate System and Components

The climate system consists of five major components: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere and their interactions. It exhibits variability across a wide range of temporal scales, from fractions of seconds to thousands of years. Positive and negative feedbacks play an important role in the climate system. Examples of positive feedbacks include the ice-albedo feedback, vegetation feedbacks, and the salt advection feedback in the thermohaline circulation. Negative feedbacks act to stabilize the climate system.

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32 views11 pages

Climate System and Components

The climate system consists of five major components: the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere and their interactions. It exhibits variability across a wide range of temporal scales, from fractions of seconds to thousands of years. Positive and negative feedbacks play an important role in the climate system. Examples of positive feedbacks include the ice-albedo feedback, vegetation feedbacks, and the salt advection feedback in the thermohaline circulation. Negative feedbacks act to stabilize the climate system.

Uploaded by

Chandra Lekha
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Climate System

and
Components
•Climate is traditionally defined as the description in terms of the mean and
variability of relevant atmospheric variables such as temperature, precipitation and
wind. Climate can thus be viewed as a synthesis or aggregate of weather.

•This implies that the portrayal of the climate in a particular region must contain an
analysis of mean conditions, of the seasonal cycle, of the probability of extremes
such as severe frost and storms, etc. Following the World Meteorological Organisation
(WMO), 30 years is the classical period for performing the statistics used to define
climate.

•Climate system consists of atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere and


biosphere

This includes five major components: (IPCC 2007)

•the atmosphere (the gaseous envelope surrounding the Earth),


•the hydrosphere (liquid water, i.e. ocean, lakes, underground water etc),
•the cryosphere (solid water, i.e. sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, etc),
•the land surface and the biosphere (all the living organisms), and of the interactions
between them.
Scales of temporal Variability of the Climate System:

Small scale oscillations : fraction of second to several minutes


Meso-scale oscillations : several minutes to several hours
Synoptic scale oscillations : several hours to several days in
atmosphere and weeks in ocean
Global variations : weeks to months
Seasonal Variations : annual periods
Inter-annual Variations : periods of several years
Intra-centennial variations : periods of tens of years
Inter-centennial Variations : periods of several centuries
Long-Period Oscillations : periods of tens of thousands of years
• A positive feedback is a process in which
an initial change will bring about an
additional change in the same direction.

• An example of a simple positive feedback in


everyday life is the growth of an interest-
earning savings account. As interest is
accrued the principal will begin to grow
(assuming money is not withdrawn). As the
principal grows, even more interest will be
accrued, quickening the rate of principal
growth.
• There are also negative feedbacks, processes in which an initial change will
bring about an additional change in the opposite direction. An example of a
simple negative feedback is your body's cooling mechanism. When your body
temperature rises, you begin to sweat. The evaporation of this sweat from your
skin cools your body and your temperature returns to normal.

• It is positive, rather than negative feedbacks that contribute to abrupt climate


changes. In positive feedbacks, a small initial perturbation can yield a large
change. Negative feedbacks, on the other hand, stabilize the system by
bringing it back to its original state.
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/story2.html
What are some examples of positive/negative feedbacks in the climate
system?
Ice-albedo feedback
Ice has a higher albedo (or reflectivity) than vegetation, soil, or water. As
ice expands, more solar radiation is reflected to space, less is absorbed
by the surface, and temperatures decrease.

Cooler temperatures lead to more ice growth, more reflection of solar radiation
back to space, and even cooler temperatures - a positive feedback.

But positive ice-albedo feedbacks can work in the opposite direction as well.
Once ice begins to melt and uncover land or water, more solar radiation
will be absorbed by the surface, raising temperatures and causing
even more ice to melt. This positive feedback might act more quickly
over the oceans than over land because sea ice can melt faster than
large continental ice sheets.

Satellite image of southern Greenland. The ice


sheet and sea ice (which is most visible
along the east coast) are more
reflective than either the land exposed
along the coast line or the ocean water.
Vegetation feedbacks
• Climate strongly influences what types of vegetation grow in a certain area.
But, vegetation can also affect climate regionally by altering the ratio of
evaporation to precipitation. In this way, a positive feedback can arise. As
bare soil is colonized by trees and shrubs, for example, evaporation of water
into the atmosphere is increased for two reasons.

• First, plants have a lower albedo (or reflectivity) than bare soil. This lower
albedo increases the amount of solar radiation absorbed at the surface, which
increases the amount of energy available for evaporation.

• Second, plants take water from the soil into their roots and lose this water
through their leaves to the atmosphere, a process called transpiration.

• These two processes are important because when soil water and surface
water evaporate rather than running off to rivers and the oceans, moisture is
recycled into the atmosphere where it can form more rain. Enhanced
precipitation will sustain the colonizers and may promote the growth of
additional plants. This positive feedback may also operate in the opposite
direction if, for example, vegetation were to begin to die.
Climate is an important factor in determining the vegetation
that can grow in a particular area, but vegetation also
affects climate through changes to the hydrologic cycle.
This positive feedback can help to sustain either rainforests
or deserts. Images courtesy of NASA and USGS
Salt advection feedback in the thermohaline circulation
The thermohaline circulation is the part of the global ocean circulation that is
driven by geographic differences in the density of sea water, which are
controlled by temperature (thermal) and salinity (haline).

In the North Atlantic this circulation transports warm and salty water from the
tropics to the north. There, the water cools and releases heat to the
atmosphere, warming the North Atlantic region. Once the water loses heat, it
becomes cooler and more dense, sinking into the deep ocean.

This deepwater flows slowly southward (~0.1 m/s) near the bottom of the
ocean basins and gradually returns to the surface as a result of wind-driven
upwelling near Antarctica and slow diffusive upwelling over the rest of the global
ocean. It then joins near-surface currents to be returned to the areas of
deepwater formation. This ocean circulation is sometimes referred to as the
"ocean conveyor belt”.

A key aspect of this global circulation circuit is the northward transport of salty
waters to the North Atlantic where, with additional cooling, surface waters
become dense enough to sink and form deepwater. Imagine that a flood of
freshwater entered the North Atlantic, perhaps from the melting of land-based
ice sheets. This would decrease the density of surface waters in the North
Atlantic and would likely reduce deepwater formation
The "conveyor" circulation would slow, just as the conveyor belt at the grocery
store would slow if an item became jammed in its descending path. Without a
strong northward flow of salt, surface water densities in the North
Atlantic would continue to decrease and deepwater formation would
further weaken - a positive feedback. A positive feedback will also operate
as a way of strengthening the circulation at times when the northward flux of
salt is enhanced.

The ocean thermohaline circulation


system is a slow, three-dimensional
pattern of flow involving the surface
and deep oceans around the world. An
important feedback exists in this
circulation related to the northward
transport of salty waters in the Atlantic.
Image courtesy of NASA.
Feedbacks mechanisms in Climate:
Climate processes are mainly forced by external and
internal forcing mechanism
External Forcing Solar forcing
Internal Forcing Determined by the
existence of feedbacks

Positive Feedback Negative Feedback


 Greenhouse effect of water  Equator-to-pole temperature
vapour and atmospheric difference and the meridional
temperature heat transport
 Albedo of snow and ice cover
 Soil humidity and albedo of land
and atmospheric temperature
surface
 Greenhouse effect of CO2 and
the surface air temperature  Air temperature and cloudiness

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