Introduction - The Global Climate System: Patterns, Processes, and Teleconnections - page 22

Table 1.1 Selected phrases illustrating ''problematic climates''

Problematic climate
Present climate data from Africa are problematic because of data collection methods (UNEP/GRIDA)
Drought and water availability are problematic even without climate change (UNEP/GRIDA)
There is a problematic funding of pure versus applied science because funding channels and goals
are different (INPECO, Clinical Laboratory Automation)
Complexity of the Earth's dynamic climate system makes long-term prediction problematic
Climate has problematic stimuli and beneficial stimuli
Problematic climate change
Dependence on fossil fuels is a problematic situation
If problematic climate change is occurring ...
CO 2 warming is not problematic
Climate change is problematic for the next generation rather than the current one (CRU)
The rate of change from today's climate to a new one is problematic (CRU)
Policies to maintain the GHGs status quo risks are worsening an already problematic problem
Detecting changes in observing extreme weather events and attributing them unequivocally
to anthropogenic climate change remains problematic (CRU)
Setting binding GHG emissions in developing countries is extremely problematic (UNEP)

1.3.5 Concluding comments
While every climate can be viewed to varying degrees as a problem climate in
the natural science sense, the word ''problematic'' better captures the con-
temporary view of what constitutes a problem climate than the one originally
defined by Trewartha ( 1981 ). The phrases in Table 1.1 , selected randomly
from different websites provide apt illustrations.
Without doubt, in the 40 years since Trewartha first introduced the notion
of problem climates, our knowledge of what we know and what we don't
know yet about the climate system has greatly improved. We now realize that
all climate regimes, local to global, are problem climates in some respect.
Today, it would be appropriate to replace the phrase ''problem climates'' with
''problematic climates,'' a phrase that directs the focus on the interconnect-
edness between the atmospheric processes that give us our climates and the
human activities that can influence or be influenced by them.
Because of the lack of complete understanding of the behavior of the
climate system, early warnings depend on the type of climate anomaly that
merits early warning, and they are of varying reliability. So, climate can be
problematic (i.e. worrisome) from a natural science perspective and also be