Climatic interpretation of high-resolution chemistry and dust data from East Antarctica

• Main Author: Lambert, Fabrice
• Other Authors: Stocker, T. F., Hutterli, M. A.
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: 530 Physics; Antarc*; Antarctica; East Antarctica
• Online Access: https://boris.unibe.ch/192502/1/lambert07phd.pdf; https://boris.unibe.ch/192502/

Climate change has become real. Extreme weather events like floods, draughts and hurricanes have gripped peoples and the media’s attention and have been put in relation with rising greenhouse gas concentrations and deforestation. Desertification and extinction of species are now monitored and alternative energy production has become a profitablemarket. These signs show that people all over the world have accepted climate changeas a reality and are prepared to adapt. The question of how to adapt and what to do hasnaturally arisen. This year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report predicts a global mean temperature rise of up to 4◦C until the end of the century [IPCC, 2007b] and describes the possible effects on human population, industry and geosphere [IPCC, 2007a]. These predictions are based on complex climate models that simulate the natural cycles on Earth. The phenomenal increase in computer power during these last twenty years has allowed more and more details and complexity in the simulation of the global climate. However, every climate model needs to be tested against observational data to validate its results. To this aim data from past climatic conditions need to be measured in various archives. The reconstruction of past climatic conditions is a primary objective of climate sciences for two reasons. For one, to feed the climate models with data to check if the simulated results recreate the past climate evolution. Then we need to understand the mechanics of interaction between the different parts of the climate system, and to asses the effects of external forcing and internal feedback processes to improve these climate models and obtain more accurate results. The positive radiative forcing feedback suggested by the IPCC [2007b] report is a sum of different factors, most prominently the greenhouse effect due to natural and anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (fig. 1.1). Another factor are the atmospheric aerosols. These have a direct effect in the sense that they absorb and ...