Climate Modelling

Abstract

If the basic laws governing the physics and the chemistry as well as empirical relations between biospheric, chemical and physical parameters are known, numerical models of the Earth system can be developed that allow to estimate potential future states of the system provided the external forcing (e.g. anthropogenic forcing) can be estimated. If only the physical processes, the external radiative forcing, e.g. by greenhouse gas concentration changes, but no interactive biogeochemical cycles except the water cycle (the most important one) are included, we speak of climate models.