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ABC of Climate Science

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Abstract

By changing the atmosphere composition, fossil fuel emissions couple humanity energy use to the climate. This chapter will focus on climate science, uncovering the link between climate and anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As early as 1859, John Tyndall found out carbon dioxide greenhouse properties. Mike Hulme’s book Why We Disagree About Climate Change [1] contains a great exposition of the discovery of climate change.

  2. 2.

    See www.noaa.gov.

  3. 3.

    The reasons why \(T_g\) fluctuates around its trend are discussed in Sect. 2.7 of Ref. [2].

  4. 4.

    We forget here about the “albedo.” See Sect. 4.3.

  5. 5.

    Regarding these 100 years, see the calculation performed in Sect. 5.5.

  6. 6.

    See Chap. 3. The \(3\times 10^{12}=\) 3,000 Gbarrels are a little more optimistic than the 2,500 we found.

  7. 7.

    In terms of fundamental physical constants, \(\sigma = \pi ^2k_B^4/60\hbar ^3c^2\) where \(k_B\) is the Boltzmann constant, \(\hbar \) the Planck constant \(h\) divided by \(2\pi \), and \(c\) the speed of light.

  8. 8.

    Such a low temperature without greenhouse effect is due to Venus’ extremely high albedo \(\alpha =0.9\).

  9. 9.

    The French “Institut Pierre Simon Laplace” has posted on YouTube a great video on climate simulations at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADf8-rmEtNg.

  10. 10.

    The French glaciologist Claude Lorius tells how he got the idea in 1965 that ancient air bubble could be trapped in ice cores: “It was when I saw these bubbles bursting when an ice cube melted in a glass of whiskey that I had the feeling they could be reliable and unique indicators of the composition of air, something we subsequently proved was correct”. In vino veritas... [16].

  11. 11.

    Just compute \(dT_e/dC_S\).

  12. 12.

    See definition in Appendix A.

  13. 13.

    By the way, this very objection holds against the Milankovitch cycles as well. Besides their improper timescale, how would they suddenly produce something they never did during the last million years?

  14. 14.

    Suppose you have 1,000 carbon-14 atoms before you. Wait 5,730 years, half of them, will have turned to nitrogen. Wait another 5,730 years, and half of the remaining carbon-14 decay. Every 5,730 years, half of the carbon-14 decay. Until there is no more left.

  15. 15.

    The number of C-14 atoms is divided by 2 every 5,730 years. So in 1 million years, it is divided (1000,000/5,730) times by 2, which means divided by \(2^{174}=2.4\times 10^{52}\). So even if you started with \(10^{50}\) of them, the number of atoms on Earth according to Wolfram Alpha, there is not any single one left after 1 million years (the number \(10^{50}\) can be easily checked, order of magnitude wise, knowing the Earth’ mass and assuming it is made up of iron).

  16. 16.

    One ton of carbon gives 3.67 t of CO\(_2\) by virtue of the atomic weights of carbon and oxygen. For the calculation, we also need the volume of the atmosphere, \(4\times 10^9\) km\(^3\), and the CO\(_2\) density, \(1.96\) kg/m\(^3\).

  17. 17.

    See a full description of the scenarios in [13] p. 18. Figure 4.10 comes from the 2007 IPCC report. Similar information can be derived from figures SPM.7 & TS.19 of the 2013 document [2], pp. 21 & 94.

  18. 18.

    CO\(_2\) is not the only greenhouse gas. Methane (CH\(_4\)), for example, is another one. All GHG emissions are therefore converted to “CO\(_2\) equivalent” according to rules we will not detail here (see [2, p. 710]). This allows to represent the full amount of GHG emissions with a single number.

  19. 19.

    The complete melting of Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets would result is a sea-level rise of \(7+58=65\) m [2, p. 321]. Just take their volume, divide by the surface of the oceans, and you find the good order of magnitude. A \({+}5\) \(^{\circ }\)C temperature rise could submerge the home of 600 million people, together with 150 of the 981 UNESCO world heritage sites [32]. For more on the impact of climate change, see the 2014 report of the IPCC Work Group II, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (www.ipcc.ch).

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  1. ETSI Industriales, Universidad Castilla La Mancha, Ciudad Real, Spain

    Antoine Bret

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Bret, A. (2014). ABC of Climate Science. In: The Energy-Climate Continuum. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07920-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07920-2_4

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