Climate Change
First, what is climate? Climate is like weather but over much longer time scales. The weather is about where it will rain or snow tomorrow or next week, and whether or not you will need to wear a coat tomorrow. Climate is about whether the amount of rainfall 10, 20 or 100 years from now will increase or decrease (which might affect plants and agriculture); and whether the temperature will consistently increase so that you can put away your warm clothes, or decrease so that you need a coat year-round.A central question of our time is whether humans are affecting the Earth's climate. This idea has been called Global Warming, but should more accurately be named Global Climate Change. This is because the changes we may see could include things like more extreme weather (storms, floods, droughts, etc) and because the changes may vary from place to place. Scientists are trying to identify and understand all the parts in the Earth system - land, ocean, the sun, the atmosphere, the polar caps, etc - that control its climate. We focus in particular on one element of the atmosphere - clouds - because clouds play a large role in controlling Earth's climate, and we need to understand how they may be changing in response to human activities.
Other Climate Change resources:
- Getting started, from RealClimate.org
- Earth Observatory article
- Earth Observatory Q&A
- Investigating the Climate System
- Koshland Science Museum
- DLESE Climate Change Reviewed Collection
You can contribute to the study of climate change in other ways, beyond the S'COOL
project. Visit climateprediction.net
to learn how you can have your personal computer run a climate model when it is
not busy. Results will contribute to an ongoing statistical analysis of climate
which is a cutting edge way of investigating our planet.
S'COOL
What to Observe
Report Form
Glossary