Introduction - The Global Climate System: Patterns, Processes, and Teleconnections - page 11

1.3.1 Introduction to the notion of problem climates
Climate encompasses variability from season to season and from year to year,
fluctuations are on the order of decades, change is on the order of centuries,
and extreme meteorological events are extreme weather events or climate
anomalies. Each of these forms of climate is appearing at the top of govern-
mental lists of concerns about global environmental, demographic, and tech-
nological change.
Problem is defined as a question raised for inquiry, consideration or solution;
an intricate unsettled question; a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation (in
this sense, problematic); synonym - a mystery.
In a recent report on climate change in the United States (NRC 2002 ), a
graphic was used to depict the climate system. The graphic included the
ocean, the atmosphere, ice, cloud systems, incoming solar radiation, and
outgoing longwave radiation. Clearly, this has been the traditional view of
the climate system. These elements interacted in a variety of ways from local
to global levels producing regional to global climate regimes. Today though,
this traditional view is no longer correct. Human activities are now affecting
the environment (land, ocean, atmosphere) in ways that affect the climate.
Headlines on climate these days often focus on global warming-related
issues: greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon dioxide), sea level rise,
tropical deforestation, and so forth. Humans have become a forcing factor
with respect to climate. What that means is that climate science has the
obligation to improve our understanding of the climate system and to under-
stand the contribution to the climate of each of its components (snow
and ice, vegetation and forecasts, clouds systems, the oceans, and also
society).
While meteorologists and climatologists are primarily concerned with the
science of atmospheric processes, individuals as well as policy makers tend to
be more concerned about the interactions between climate and society in
general, and more specifically between climate extremes and human activ-
ities. Societies have tended to look at climate in at least one of three ways.
Climate is seen as a hazard, as a constraint, and as a resource. In each society
climate is a mix of these three, but the proportions among them can vary from
one country to the next. Societies see climate as a hazard; its anomalies can
lead to death, destruction, and misery. Governments at least in theory have
the responsibility to protect their citizenry from climate and climate-related
disasters. Climate as a constraint refers to the limitations that the physical
climate places on human activities specifically and on economic develop-
ment in general. In attempts to overcome climate-related constraints, socie-
ties have resorted to various technologies to reduce those limits: heating,