Marine Climate and Climate Change

by Weisse, Ralf; Storch, Hans Von

• ISBN13: 9783540253167
• ISBN10: 3540253165
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-01
• Publisher: Springer Verlag

Summary

Understanding marine environmental conditions such as wind, storms, waves and surges is essential for off-shore operations such as shipping or drilling, as well as for coastal defence. These conditions establish the essential framework for the construction of dikes or operation of harbours. Of urgent interest is whether - and how - marine environmental conditions have changed or will change as a result of human influence on climate.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
List of figures	p. xiii
List of tables	p. xvii
List of abbreviations and acronyms	p. xix
Climate and climate variability	p. 1
Introduction	p. 1
Definition of climate	p. 1
The climate system	p. 3
Components of the climate system	p. 3
General circulation of the atmosphere	p. 4
General circulation of the oceans	p. 8
Climate variability	p. 12
Internally driven and externally forced variability	p. 12
Interplay between regional and planetary climate	p. 16
Summary	p. 22
References	p. 23
Marine weather phenomena	p. 27
Introduction	p. 27
Mid-latitude storms and storm tracks	p. 27
Tropical cyclones	p. 35
Wind-generated waves	p. 44
Introduction	p. 44
Long and short-term variations of the sea state	p. 48
Freak or rogue waves	p. 51
Tides, storm surges, and mean sea level	p. l57
Storm surges	p. 57
Tides	p. 66
Mean sea level	p. l69
Summary	p. 71
References	p. 73
Models for the marine environment	p. 77
Introduction	p. 77
Quasi-realistic modeling	p. 79
Climate models	p. 82
General circulation models	p. 83
Global climate models	p. 87
Regional climate models	p. 90
Wind wave models	p. 96
The wave spectrum	p. 96
Equation for wave energy	p. 98
Frequently used parameters to describe the sea state	p. 102
Tide-surge models	p. 103
Shallow-water equations	p. 105
Performance of tide-surge models	p. 106
Summary	p. 107
References	p. 108
How to determine long-term changes in marine climate	p. 113
Introduction	p. 113
Problems with data quality	p. 114
Data homogeneity	p. 115
Data availability	p. 118
Operational weather analyses and other derived data sets	p. 121
Proxy data	p. 124
Global reanalyses and regional reconstructions	p. 129
Can climate trends be estimated from reanalysis data?	p. 130
The NCEP/NCAR Global Reanalysis	p. 135
Other global reanalyses	p. 140
Regional reanalyses and reconstructions	p. 142
Regionalization techniques	p. 144
Scenarios and projections	p. 149
Detection and attribution	p. 151
The detection problem	p. 152
The attribution problem	p. 153
Trends and detection	p. 154
Summary	p. 156
References	p. 158
Past and future changes in wind, wave, and storm surge climates	p. 165
Introduction	p. 165
Mid-latitude cyclones and storm tracks	p. 166
Past changes and variability	p. 166
Future changes	p. 171
Tropical cyclones	p. 173
Past changes and variability	p. 173
Future changes	p. 176
Wind-generated waves	p. 180
Past changes and variability	p. 180
Future changes	p. 184
Tides, storm surges, and mean sea level	p. 187
Mean sea level	p. 187
Storm surges	p. 392
Tides	p. 194
Summary	p. 195
References	p. 196
Appendices	p. 205
Scale analysis	p. 205
Geostrophic wind	p. 207
Geopotential height and pressure as vertical coordinates	p. 210
Thermal wind	p. 211
List of symbols	p. 212
References	p. 213
Index	p. 215
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