Ocean Circulation and Climate: Chapter 25. The Ocean's Role in Modeling and Predicting Decadal Climate Variations

Ocean Circulation and Climate: Chapter 25. The Ocean's Role in Modeling and Predicting Decadal Climate Variations
ISBN-10
0128058749
ISBN-13
9780128058749
Series
Ocean Circulation and Climate
Category
Science
Pages
904
Language
English
Published
2013-10-22
Publisher
Elsevier Inc. Chapters
Author
Mojib Latif

Description

An inherent feature of the climate is its strong variability on a vast range of timescales, from seasonal to multimillennial and beyond. Decadal variability, which is the topic of this chapter, has large implications for society, as its consequences can be experienced by individuals during their own lifetime. Examples of decadal variability include the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s in the American and Canadian prairie lands, the Sahel drought of the 1970s and 1980s, the ongoing drought which started in 2000 in the southwestern United States, and the multidecadal variability in Atlantic hurricane activity during the twentieth century. Furthermore, it is the decadal to multidecadal variability that makes the detection of anthropogenic climate change a challenge, since global warming evolves on a similar timescale. The detection problem specifically applies to the regional scale, where natural variability is the strongest. It is a central challenge of climate science to understand and possibly predict such regional-scale climate variability and change over timescales of decades.

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