Climate of the Earth system

Prof. Dr. Markus Meier
Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW)
E-Mail: markus.meier@io-warnemuende.de

Lecture overview

General information

• Lecture held by Prof. Dr. Markus Meier (markus.meier@io-warnemuende), professor in physical oceanography at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde(IOW) and Rostock University, master thesis ??

• Exercises held by Dr. Sven Karsten (sven.karsten@io-warnemuende.de) and Dr. Florian Börgel (florian.boergel@io-warnemuende.de)

• about the course:

  1. Climate of the Earth system (winter term)

  2. Climate of the Baltic Sea region (summer school in August, on Askö, Sweden, part of the masters programm at Rostock University), https://baltic.earth/education/summer_winter_schools/index.php.en

Information about the course Update for next year

• Rostock University (master in physics): 6 ECTS (~13 lectures á 180 min, tutorials and exercises, no lecture on 3 January 2024, 4 weeks project work, project presentation on 24 January 2024)

• Wednesday 13:15-14:45, 15:00-16:30 (17:00)

• Hybrid format: online and in person

• Language: English

• Exercises will be held in Jupyter Notebooks using Python as programming language: https://iow-lectures.pages.io-warnemuende.de/climateoftheearth/

• Please provide me with your email address to send you the slides

Content

• Fundamental processes in the Earth’s climate system of the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice

• Fundamental statistical analysis methods and modelling of climate variability on Earth including anthropogenic global warming and other forcings

• Time series analysis, multivariate data analysis, uncertainty analysis in statistical methods and strategies for statistical analysis of instrumental observational, proxy and model data

• Global radiation models

• Feedback mechanisms and tipping points in the Earth’s climate system

• Coupled climate models for atmosphere, ocean and sea ice

• Spatial and temporal internal variability of the large-scale circulation

• Paleoclimate variability and climate projections

• In the exercises, necessary basic knowledge in scientific programming for the modelling and analysis of Earth system data is taught

Fig. 1 EURO-CORDEX climate simulation visualization using Dalle-3

Literature

• Courtesy: Lectures from Ulrich Cubasch, Erik Kjellström

• Lecture notes from Dietmar Dommenget: An Introduction to Climate Dynamics and An Introduction to Statistical Analysis in Climate Research

• Daniel Wilks: Statistical Methods in the Atmospheric Sciences. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-385022-5.00001-4

• Hans von Storchand Francis W. Zwiers: Statistical Analysis in Climate Research. Cambridge University Press

• Hamburger Bildungsserver (https://bildungsserver.hamburg.de/themenschwerpunkte/klimawandel-und-klimafolgen, only in German)

Complementing literature

• Lecture notes on Climate of the Ocean, WS 2016/2017

• Climate assessments:

  • global: IPCC (https://www.ipcc.ch, open access), SROCC

  • regional: BACC I and II, BEAR (https://baltic.earth, open access), NOSCCA (North Sea Region Climate Change Assessment, open acces)

• Atmospheric and oceanic fluid dynamics:

  • James R. Holton: An introduction to dynamic meteorology

  • Geoffrey K. Vallis: Climate and the oceans

  • Geoffrey K. Vallis: Atmospheric and oceanic fluid dynamics

  • Olbers, Willebrand and Eden: Ocean Dynamics, Springer (2012)