Related papers: A Pedagogical "Toy" Climate Model
A simple phenomenological account for planetary climate instabilities is presented. The description is based on the standard model where the balance of incoming stellar radiation and outward thermal radiation is described by the effective…
It is often known, from modelling studies, that a certain mode of climate tipping (of the oceanic thermohaline circulation, for example) is governed by an underlying fold bifurcation. For such a case we present a scheme of analysis that…
We discuss a simple toy model which allows, in a natural way, for deriving central facts from thermodynamics such as its fundamental laws, including Carnot's version of the second principle. Our viewpoint represents thermodynamic systems as…
This article discusses the limits of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory advocated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A phenomenological theory of climate change based on the physical properties of the data themselves is…
When the climate system is forced, e.g. by emission of greenhouse gases, it responds on multiple time scales. As temperatures rise, feedback processes might intensify or weaken. Current methods to analyze feedback strength, however, do not…
Current techniques for predicting climate change are mainly based on "massive" deterministic numerical modeling. However, the ocean-atmosphere system is a so-called "complex system", made up of a large number of interacting elements. We…
Ongoing and future space missions aim to identify potentially habitable planets in our Solar System and beyond. Planetary habitability is determined not only by a planet's current stellar insolation and atmospheric properties, but also by…
With the growing number of discovered exoplanets, the Gaia concept finds its second wind. The Gaia concept defines that the biosphere of an inhabited planet regulates a planetary climate through feedback loops such that the planet remains…
With climate change, we are expecting more frequent extreme weather events in many regions worldwide. These events can trigger disruptive, deadly natural hazards, which catch the attention of the media and raise awareness in citizens and…
Multistability is a ubiquitous feature in systems of geophysical relevance and provides key challenges for our ability to predict a system's response to perturbations. Near critical transitions small causes can lead to large effects and -…
Palaeoclimate archives contain information on climate variability, trends and mechanisms. Models are developed to explain observations and predict the response of the climate system to perturbations, in particular perturbations associated…
Simple climate models have been around for more than a century but have recently come back into fashion: they are useful for explaining global warming and the habitability of extrasolar planets. The Climate App (https://www.climateapp.ca)…
Climate change is a result of a complex system of interactions of greenhouse gases (GHG), the ocean, land, ice, and clouds. Large climate change models use several computers and solve several equations to predict the future climate. The…
Starting from a classical Budyko-Sellers-Ghil energy balance model for the average surface temperature of the Earth, a nonautonomous version is designed by allowing the solar irradiance and the cloud cover coefficients to vary with time in…
Climate change is a reality of today. Paleoclimatic proxies and climate predictions based on coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models provide us with temperature data. Using Detrended Fluctuation Analysis, we are investigating…
Conventionally, a habitable planet is one that can support liquid water on its surface. Habitability depends on temperature, which is set by insolation and the greenhouse effect, due mainly to CO2 and water vapor. The CO2 level is increased…
Global climate models represent small-scale processes such as clouds and convection using quasi-empirical models known as parameterizations, and these parameterizations are a leading cause of uncertainty in climate projections. A promising…
Conventional definitions of habitability require abundant liquid surface water to exist continuously over geologic timescales. Water in each of its thermodynamic phases interacts with solar and thermal radiation and is the cause for strong…
Water-rich planets such as Earth are expected to become eventually uninhabitable, because liquid water does not remain stable at the surface as surface temperatures increase with the solar luminosity over time. Whether a large increase of…
Using observational data and an elementary rigorous statistical fact it is easily shown that the distribution of Earth's climate is non-stationary. Examination of records of hundreds of local Industrial Era temperature histories in the…