Abstract
The causes of the large-scale climatic changes of the past are still only partly understood —this is especially true for those at a time-scale between 1 and 100 years.- We may distinguish between “internal” and “external” causes (1): causes within the climatic system as consisting of atmosphere, ocean, ice and snow, biosphere and soil and those from outside (e.g. volcanic eruptions, hypothetical changes of the solar “constant”). Changes caused through variations of the composition of the air may be internal or external: a CO2 input by using fossil fuel should be considered as external; as coal and oil have been formed through photosynthetic processes within the biosphere since 4×108 years ago, CO2 input by the destruction of living forests in the tropics should be considered as internal, but man-triggered. In this paper several “cold” and “warm” scenarios are outlined on the basis of historical and paleoclimatic reconstructions; the change of internal and external atmospheric boundary conditions since these times must be taken into account. This seemingly crude approach is necessary, because of three reasons:
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i:
due to the lack of comprehensive models of the climatic system, taking into account the dynamics of the ocean and its interaction with atmosphere and ice, no model can, at present, adequately simulate the actual surface climate with sufficient detail about the annual variation of temperature and rainfall;
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ii:
future comprehensive models of the climatic system have to be tested against past climatic changes before being applied to future changes;
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iii:
climatic change impact studies necessitate, as input, at least a first-order approximation of future climates.
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Flohn, H. (1981). Scenarios of Cold and Warm Periods of the Past. In: Berger, A. (eds) Climatic Variations and Variability: Facts and Theories. NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series, vol 72. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8514-8_38
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8514-8_38
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