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An Introduction to the Science of Climate Change

Climate has always been a primary driver of civilization. Climate largely dictates what we wear, what we eat, what modes of transport we use and what type of dwellings we construct for shelter. Climate literally touches every facet of our lives. As such, climate has played a tremendous role in shaping the very fabric of our civilization.

Through millennia we have become accustomed to, and even comforted by, our relationship with the Earth’s climate system. That relationship has always been a one-way relationship. The climate changes and we react to it. Even as we harnessed the power of nature by planting its river bottoms, damming its rivers, mining its ore and logging its forests we never fathomed the possibility that we could change the Earth’s climate. How could we ever alter something so powerful and so immense as the climate by simply living our lives?

Through our own ingenuity and with gifts from nature, we have constructed our entire civilization on energy produced from oil, coal and natural gas. Unfortunately we are coming to realize that there are unintended consequences from our reliance on fossil fuels, mainly through the generation and emission of carbon dioxide. Once thought of as an innocuous gas, carbon dioxide is also a “greenhouse gas,” meaning it traps heat within the atmosphere which, in turn, tends to warm the climate. So we are doing what was once considered unimaginable, we are changing the Earth’s climate. 

As we continue to study the Earth’s climate system and how carbon dioxide is likely to alter it, we are continually amazed and humbled by the complexity and intricacy of the system. What starts as a small ripple in global temperature propagates into every part of the climate system where it can lead to consequences that far outsize the initial ripple. We are coming to appreciate the notion of “thresholds” in our climate system where a small changes acting over a long time, such as carbon dioxide emissions, leads to a large response that occurs over a very short time.

In this presentation I will try introduce the concept of global climate change along with the notion of thresholds. Examples of carbon-dioxide instigated thresholds in the climate system include rapid loss of Arctic sea ice, dramatic feedbacks driven by marine and terrestrial ecosystems and rapid sea-level rise due to melting ice sheets. I will touch on a few of these examples in an attempt to illustrate the two main points of the presentation. First, we have entered an era where we will determine the trajectory of the global climate system in ways we do not fully appreciate. And second, since the science of global climate change will continue to unfold for decades to come there are great opportunities for all of us, young and old.

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