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In the 1980s, the terms global warming and climate change became more common, often being used interchangeably. [ 29 ] [ 30 ] [ 31 ] Scientifically, global warming refers only to increased surface warming, while climate change describes both global warming and its effects on Earth's climate system , such as precipitation changes.
The climate system will vary in response to changes in forcings. [15] The climate system will show internal variability both in the presence and absence of forcings imposed on it. This internal variability is a result of complex interactions between components of the climate system, such as the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean. [16]
Climate models are available on different resolutions ranging from >100 km to 1 km. High resolutions in global climate models require significant computational resources, and so only a few global datasets exist. Global climate models can be dynamically or statistically downscaled to regional climate models to analyze impacts of climate change ...
In addition to global climate variability and global climate change over time, numerous climatic variations occur contemporaneously across different physical regions. The oceans' absorption of about 90% of excess heat has helped to cause land surface temperatures to grow more rapidly than sea surface temperatures. [132]
The five components of the climate system all interact. They are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. [1]: 1451 Earth's climate system is a complex system with five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things).
On a scale of 1 out of 7, where higher numbers indicated greater disagreement, "global warming is already underway" had a mean rating of 3.4, and "global warming will occur in the future" had an even greater agreement of 2.6 Surveyed scientists had less confidence in the accuracy of contemporary climate models, rating their ability to make ...
For the climate system, the term refers to a critical threshold at which global or regional climate changes from one stable state to another stable state.". [15] In ecosystems and in social systems, a tipping point can trigger a regime shift, a major systems reorganisation into a new stable state. [16] Such regime shifts need not be harmful.
Diagram of factors that determine climate sensitivity. After increasing CO 2 levels, there is an initial warming. This warming gets amplified by the net effect of climate feedbacks. 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 ...