The Climate System

J. Berdowski, R. Guicherit, B.J. Heij

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9789058092557
• eBook ISBN: 9781000446739
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Meteorology & Climatology

These results from the National Research Programme on Climate Change of the Netherlands offer a synthesis of present knowledge in the fields of: source and sinks of greenhouse gases and aerosols; land-atmosphere interactions; the global energy balance; and radiative forcing and climate variability.

1

Introduction

1.1 Context and motivation

The Dutch National Research Programme on Global Air Pollution and Climate Change (NRP) is a strategic research programme to support climate policy and stimulate climate research in the Netherlands. The NRP focuses on mid- and long-term questions. The goals of the programme are:

• to strengthen and support the Dutch climate policy, in national and international contexts;

• to support active communication between science, policy and society on climate change issues;

• To strengthen the Dutch research structure on climate change.

The nature of the climate problem warrants a multi-disciplinary approach.

The programme was therefore originally organised into four themes:

• dynamics of the climate system and its component parts;

• vulnerability of natural and societal systems to climate change;

• societal causes and solutions;

• integration and assessment.

In the last two years of the programme, two themes were added to widen the scope of the programme and to strive for added value from the running research projects:

• cross-cutting issues, e.g. the linkages between various environmental issues such as the stratospheric cooling induced by ozone depletion and the global warming resulting from the greenhouse effect;

• internationalisation, aiming to support various initiatives in the field of development of international programmes.

The first phase of the NRP, in which 150 projects were carried out, ran from 1990 to 1995. The NRP is currently in its second phase (1995–2001). About 80 projects are realised in this phase. The reporting of the second phase NRP-results will take place in various ways.

Every project within the NRP produces a final report (as a rule published in the own NRP-series). An overall policy-oriented final report (an IPCC-Summary for Policymakers-like document) will address the main questions of Dutch policymakers. That means that it neither aims for completeness nor gives any scientific details. The scientific outcome of the NRP II has been and will be reported in relevant scientific journals and books.

The evaluation report of the first phase of the NRP states that there remains the need for considerable improvement to increase the linkage among and within projects, clusters and themes’. This signal has been taken seriously in the second phase of the NRP. Therefor, a number of books will present syntheses, based on the combination of insights gained from a number of NRP-projects in certain areas: the climate system, climate change and land-use, trend breaks in national (Dutch) climate policy and international climate policy. This book is one of this series and it aims at presenting the surplus value, obtained by evaluating the combined knowledge from the separate NRP-projects in the following four areas of the climate system:

• budgets for emission sources and sinks;

• the land-component in the climate system;

• the global energy balance and radiative forcing;

• climate variability.

The choice of these areas has been based on the output of the following considerations:

• availability of specific expertise within the NRP;

• region-specific knowledge and/or relevance (e.g. regional climate forcing, methane emissions from rice paddy’s);

• region-specific application of generic models to address regional problems and comparison of results.

Figure 1.1 shows the relation between the four areas (grey coloured) in the climate system that will be discussed in this book and the relation of these areas with atmospheric composition and global change. It also indicates that other, important parts of the climate system are not addressed in this book.

The area boxes Socio-economic aspects and Production are not explicitly an item of research for this book, however, emissions of greenhouse gases depend on energy consumption, production processes, etc. Also, there is a relationship between land cover and land use on the one hand side and the hydrological cycle over land on the other. The global emissions have been estimated by applying information on demography, the technology of processes etc. (Socio-economic aspects) and data of energy consumption, industrial production, etc. (Production). Also, the area of Atmospheric Composition will only be discussed in relation to either emission of GHG’s and Radiative Forcing...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Executive summary
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Global emission sources and sinks
• 3. The land-component in the climate system
• 4. Global energy balance and radiative forcing
• 5. Climate variability
• Annex I Forcing estimates and uncertainties
• Annex II Formation, sources and composition of ambient fine- en coaresemode particles
• Annex III NRP Projects Theme I “Dynamics of the climate system and its component parts”