Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
[8] [10] Climate change, a result of this excess CO 2 in the atmosphere, has increased the temperature of the ocean and atmosphere. [11] The slowed rate of global warming occurring from 2000–2010 [12] may be attributed to an observed increase in upper ocean heat content. [13] [14]
On million-year time scales, the carbonate-silicate cycle is a key factor in controlling Earth's climate because it regulates carbon dioxide levels and therefore global temperature. [3] The rate of weathering is sensitive to factors that change how much land is exposed. These factors include sea level, topography, lithology, and vegetation ...
The Earth's atmospheric circulation varies from year to year, but the large-scale structure of its circulation remains fairly constant. The smaller-scale weather systems – mid-latitude depressions , or tropical convective cells – occur chaotically, and long-range weather predictions of those cannot be made beyond ten days in practice, or a ...
The lapse rate is the rate at which an atmospheric variable, normally temperature in Earth's atmosphere, falls with altitude. [25] [26] It is therefore a quantification of temperature, related to radiation, as a function of altitude, and is not a separate phenomenon in this context. The lapse rate feedback is generally a negative feedback.
Reconstructions of global temperature of the past 2000 years, using composite of different proxy methods. In the study of past climates ("paleoclimatology"), climate proxies are preserved physical characteristics of the past that stand in for direct meteorological measurements [1] and enable scientists to reconstruct the climatic conditions over a longer fraction of the Earth's history.
Climate sensitivity is a key measure in climate science and describes how much Earth's surface will warm for a doubling in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) concentration. [1] [2] Its formal definition is: "The change in the surface temperature in response to a change in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2) concentration or other radiative ...
The temperature at zero depth is the sea surface temperature. The ocean temperature plays a crucial role in the global climate system, ocean currents and for marine habitats. It varies depending on depth, geographical location and season. Not only does the temperature differ in seawater, so does the salinity.
The geothermal heat flow from the Earth's interior is estimated to be 47 terawatts (TW) [12] and split approximately equally between radiogenic heat and heat left over from the Earth's formation. This corresponds to an average flux of 0.087 W/m 2 and represents only 0.027% of Earth's total energy budget at the surface, being dwarfed by the 173 ...