Physical Climatology

Final Exam

November 25, 2008

   

Due Monday, December 8, 2008

Show all your work.

Do your work by yourself, without working together.

[11.2 means Chapter 11, Exercise 2.]

1. 11.2

2. 12.1

3. 12.2

4. 12.3

5. 12.4

6. 12.5

7. Lean and Rind (2008) got some very strange results, including a larger anthropogenic signal in the tropics than in high latitudes and the strongest solar signal in midlatitude bands.  Discuss at least two of the choices they made in their analysis that may have led to errors in the results.  If you can show how these choices actually led to these results you get extra credit, but to get full credit you only need identify simplifications that could potentially distort the results.

Lean, Judith L., and David H. Rind (2008), How natural and anthropogenic influences alter global and regional surface temperatures: 1889 to 2006, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L18701, doi:10.1029/2008GL034864.

8. When the CO2 concentration throughout the atmosphere goes up, the stratosphere cools and the troposphere warms, yet when the stratospheric O3 concentration goes down, the same thing happens-the stratosphere cools and the troposphere warms. Why?

9. If all fossil fuel combustion ceased tomorrow, how would the global climate change in the next 2 weeks, as compared to how it would have changed with business as usual? How about the next 2 years? 20 years? 200 years? Consider all the products of fossil fuel combustion, and their relative lifetimes.

10. a.  Describe the climatic effects of large low-latitude volcanic eruptions.
      b.  Describe the climatic effects of large high-latitude volcanic eruptions.  In what ways are they similar to those from low-latitude eruptions, and in what ways are they different?  Why?


Prepared by Alan Robock (robock@envsci.rutgers.edu) - Last updated on November 25, 2008