Intrinsic Thermodynamical Time-Scales of the Atmosphere-Ocean-Cryosphere Climate System

• Main Author: Chu, Peter C.
• Other Authors: NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA DEPT OF OCEANOGRAPHY
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1993
• Subjects: Meteorology; Thermodynamics; *CLIMATE; *THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES; *EARTH ATMOSPHERE; ANTARCTIC REGIONS; OCEANS; GLACIOLOGY; EARTH(PLANET); *CRYOSPHERE CLIMATE SYSTEM; Antarctic; Antarc*; ice core
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA530527; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA530527

Quantitative reconstruction of climatic parameters from both oceanic and continental records shows several time scales of the successive glacial-interglacial episodes that have characterized the Earth's climate about the past million years. For example, after analyzing data from the 2,083 m ice core recovered by the Soviet Antarctic Expeditions at Vostok (East Antarctic), Jouzel et al. (1982) found several peaks (25.3, 45.7, and 107.5 kyr) in the variation spectra of the Vostok isotope temperature, and related these peaks to the astronomical forcing, i.e., the obliquity of the Earth's axis (period at 41 kyr) and the precession of the equinox (periods at 23 and 19 kyr). Is the climatic variation purely caused by the external forcing? If so, the climate prediction would be relatively simple because it becomes the forecast of the Earth's orbit tilt and precession. In fact, the climate system is much more complicated. The climatic variation is caused by both external and internal sources. Presented at the Conference on Global Change, American Meteorological Society (4th), 433-438, 1993.