Observing Global Climate Change

Kyrill Ya Kondratyev, Arthur P. Cracknell

Part 1 Introduction: background; the factors involved in climate change; natural factors affecting climate change; nuclear war and climate; on the perspective concept and climate change studies. Part 2 The observed regularities of climate: the CO2 cycle and global-scale climate changes from observational data; detecting the CO2 signal; a global system of observations. Part 3 The World Climate Research Programme WCRP: fundamental principles of the WCRP; the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment GEWEX. Part 4 Principal climatically-important processes: cloudiness and radiation; processes in the ocean; the Arctic, the Antarctic and climate; land surface processes; optically-active minor gaseous compounds; aerosols and climate; solar-terrestrial interrelations; development, verification and application of climate models; the comparative climatology of planets. Part 5 The internal variability of the climate system: climate diagnostics; the theory of short-period climate changes; the sections programme; the world ocean and climate; nested climate models. Part 6 External impacts on the climactic system: CO2 and climate; the multifaceted nature of the atmospheric greenhouse effect; volcanoes and climate. Part 7 Conclusion.