Lecture content:

On the Physics of the Climate System: Ice Age or Greenhouse Climate?
"An increasing body of observations gives the collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system."
This statement in the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001 is based on a wide variety of observations and model simulations.
The present characteristics of the climate system are a product of a long-term evolution determined by external forcing (sun, volcanoes) and internal interactions within the climate system, which is composed of atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, land surfaces, and the marine and terrestrial biosphere. Until 250 years ago, the interference of man was negligible, and climate variations were a product of natural processes and interactions alone. Since the beginning of industrialisation the composition of the atmosphere, especially the concentrations of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, have significantly increased. In addition, the character of the land surface has been largely modified through land-use and land-cover change through human activities. Part of the observed global warming during the past 100 years is attributed to these anthropogenic impacts.
This course provides the evidence of climate variations on all time-scales, and presents an introduction to the physics of the climate system. The topics presented will include in-situ measurements, remote sensing techniques and numerical modelling.

Special topics are:
1. Introduction to the Climate on Earth
2. Climate Variations
3. The Climate System
4. Energy Balance Models
5. Daisy World
6. Radiation Processes
7. Convection and Radiation Model

Literature
McGuffie, K. and A. Henderson-Sellers: A Climate Modelling Primer, Wiley, Chichester, 1997
Peixoto, J.P. and A.H. Oort: Physics of Climate, American Institute of Physics, New York, 1992
J.T. Houghton, Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell and C.A. Johnson (eds.): Climate Change 2001 - The Scientific Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001. (Technical Summary is available under http://www.ipcc.ch)
Storch, Hans von, S. Güss und M. Heimann: Das Klimasystem und seine Modellierung, Springer, Berlin, 1999.