CHAPTER 4 - CLIMATOLOGY

• Climatology


  The scientific study of climate
• Climate


  Weather patterns that have been averaged over a given period of time to obtain a consistent pattern of the expected atmospheric conditions
• Weather


  The atmospheric condition of a particular place over a short period of time, normally a day
• Weather averaging for a long and indefinite period of time makes it possible to predict the climatic pattern of an area
• Climatology


  • A subdivision of physical geography, atmospheric sciences, and earth sciences
  • Aspects of oceanography and biogeography have also been considered as part of climatology
  • Focuses on aspects such as atmospheric boundary layer, circulation patterns, heat transfer in the globe, ocean interaction with the atmosphere and land surface, land use and topography
• Science


  Truths and facts that have been obtained through constant research, systematic methods, evaluation of phenomena, and observation
• Climatology is a scientific method that involves all the aspects that define science
• To obtain climatic patterns, several scales and gauges are employed in the climatic research
• Climatology


  • Concerned with the climate of a place
  • Establishes the reason for the fluctuation of climate in the area
  • How human activities lead to climatic variations
  • Effects of the climate on human activities
  • The characteristics of the climate
• Climate also depends on the layers of the earth and atmosphere, a further manifestation of its scientific nature
• Importance of Climatology


  • Determining the climatic patterns of a particular region
  • Establishing the climatic pattern is significant in deciding the economic activities that would thrive in that particular region
  • Helps people understand the seasons of engaging in particular tasks, especially for tourists and farmers
  • Infrastructure development, especially buildings, are dependent on climate
• Climatology seeks to establish why climate varies from place to another
• Meteorology


  Focuses on forecasting weather by looking at a few basic atmospheric interactions and hoping to predict the weather in the next few days
• Climatology


  Takes a much larger view of the whole climate/weather idea, looking at how climates are created and what they do to the environment. It is a long-term study of the geographic world.
• History of Climatology


  • Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the Islamic Middle East
  • Dawn of the Industrial Revolution
  • The Later 19th Century
  • Early 20th Century
  • The 1960s and 1970s
  • The 1980s to the Turn of the Millennium
• Many of the ancient precursors to modern science lived in Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the Islamic Middle East
• Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, made note of some strange climatic phenomena and was a known early ecologist
• True climatology and an attempt to divide climate change between the natural and the anthropogenic factors arose around the time we began to understand how our mining for resources and increasing carbon emission could alter the planet, during the 19th century
• The history of climate science/climatology is also, in many ways, a history of ecology and a history of paleoclimatology
• The idea that a climate could change quite dramatically was demonstrated through evidence such as desert revealed as once being a tropical swamp, the Arctic circle being more like lush tundra than fields of ice, and the retreat of sea levels and ice
• It was during the height of the Industrial Revolution that chemists identified the greenhouse gases, with the warming effects of CO2 emissions identified early on
• In 1896, the first paper was published attempting to explain and discover sources of increased atmospheric CO2, with researchers knowing that a byproduct of burning coal was CO2
• Early scientists saw the increase in CO2 as a good thing, without the understanding of the impacts on ecology, biodiversity, the food cycle, sea levels, and long-term weather patterns
• Around 1920, it was discovered that the "Solar Constant" was not true, and the idea that climate could change through natural means was finally beginning to take shape
• In the 1960s, researchers began looking at the climate and ecology through the lens of humanity's actions, with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring leading to the banning of some toxic chemicals and the birth of ecology
• The Space Race made everyone realize that we inhabit just one planet, that our resources are finite and should do what we must to protect the natural environment for future generations
• From the 1980s to the turn of the millennium, researchers were still concerned with the anthropogenic causes of modern climate fluctuations, with evidence demonstrating the correlation between human activity and the present warming
• Today, 97% of research data suggests an almost certain correlation between human activity and the present warming