ALBERT

Note: Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Leningrad—1982 1.2 ‘Global Warming’ or ‘Global Weirding’ 1.3 My Background 1.4 What Is Science? 1.5 The Observational Sciences 1.6 The Compexity of Nature 1.7 Summary 2 Discovering Climate 2.1 Defining ‘Climate’ 2.2 Numerical Descriptions of Climate 2.3 How Science Works 2.4 Summary 3 The Language of Science 3.1 Numbers and Symbols 3.2 Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus 3.3 Shapes 3.4 Orders of Magnitude and Exponents 3.5 Logarithms 3.6 Logarithms and Scales with Bases Other Than 10 3.7 Earthquake Scales 3.8 The Beaufort Wind Force Scale 3.9 Extending the Beaufort Scale to Cyclonic Storms 3.10 Calendars and Time 3.11 Summary 4 Applying Mathematics to Problems 4.1 Measures and Weights 4.2 The Nautical Mile 4.3 The Metric System 4.4 Temperature 4.5 Precisely Defining Some Words You Already Know 4.6 Locating Things 4.7 Latitude and Longitude 4.8 Map Projections 4.9 Trigonometry 4.10 Circles, Ellipses, and Angular Velocity 4.11 Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces 4.12 Graphs 4.13 Exponential Growth and Decay 4.14 The Logistic Equation 4.15 Statistics 4.16 Summary 5 Geologic Time 5.1 Age of the Earth—4004 BCE, or Older? 5.2 The Discovery of the Depths of Time—Eternity 5.3 Geologic Time Punctuated by Revolutions 5.4 Catastrophism Replaced by Imperceptibly Slow Gradual Change 5.5 The Development of the Geological Timescale 5.6 The Discovery of the Ice Age 5.7 The Discovery of Past Warm Polar Regions 5.8 Throwing a Monkey Wrench into Explaining Climate Change 5.9 Crustal Mobility’ to the Rescue 5.10 The Return of Catastrophism and the Idea of Rapid Change 5.11 The Nature of the Geologic Record 5.12 The Great Extinctions and Their Causes 5.13 Summary—A History with No Dates 6 Putting Numbers on Geologic Ages 6.1 1788—An Abyss of Time of Unknown Dimensions 6.2 1863—Physics Comes to the Rescue—Earth Is Not More than 100 Million Years Old 6.3 What We Now Know About Heat from Earth’s Interior 6.4 Some Helpful Background in Understanding Nineteenth-Century Chemistry 6.5 Atomic Weight, Atomic Mass, Isotopes, Relative Atomic Mass, Standard Atomic Weight—A Confusing Plethora of Terms 6.6 1895–1913—The Worlds of Physics and Chemistry Turned Upside Down 6.7 Henri Becquerel and the Curies 6.8 Nonconformists and the British Universities Open to All 6.9 The Discovery of Electrons, Alpha-Rays, and Beta-Rays 6.10 The Discovery of Radioactive Decay Series, Exponential Decay Rates, and Secular Equilibrium 6.11 The Mystery of the Decay Series Explained by Isotopes 6.12 The Discovery That Radioactive Decay Series Might Be Used to Determine the Age of Rocks 6.13 The Discovery of Stable Isotopes 6.14 Rethinking the Structure of the Atom 6.15 From Science to Science Fiction 6.16 The Discovery of Protons and Neutrons 6.17 Arthur Holmes and the Age of the Earth 6.18 The Development of a Numerical Geological Timescale 6.19 Summary 7 Documenting Past Climate Change 7.1 What Is ‘Climate’? 7.2 A Brief Overview of Earth’s Climate History 7.3 The Cenozoic Climate ‘Deterioration’ 7.4 From Ages to Process Rates 7.5 Radiometric Age Dating in the Mid-Twentieth Century 7.6 Potassium—Argon Dating 7.7 Reversals of Earth’s Magnetic Field 7.8 Fission Track Dating 7.9 Astronomical Dating 7.10 Tritium, Carbon-14, and Beryllium-10 7.11 The Human Acceleration of Natural Process Rates 7.12 The Present Climate in Its Geologic Context 7.13 Steady State Versus Non-steady State 7.14 Feedbacks 7.15 Summary 8 The Nature of Energy Received from the Sun—The Analogies with Water Waves and Sound 8.1 Water Waves 8.2 Special Water Waves—Tides and Tsunamis 8.3 Wave Energy, Refraction, and Reflection 8.4 Sound Waves 8.5 Sound Waves and Music 8.6 Measuring the Speed of Sound in Air 8.7 Measuring the Speed of Sound in Water 8.8 The Practical Use of Sound in Water 8.9 Summary 9 The Nature of Energy Received from the Sun—Figuring Out What Light Really Is 9.1 Early Ideas About Light 9.2 Refraction of Light 9.3 Measuring the Speed of Light 9.4 The Discovery of Double Refraction or ‘Birefringence’ 9.5 Investigating the Dispersion of Light 9.6 Figuring Out the Wavelengths of Different Colors of Light 9.7 Diffraction 9.8 Polarization of Light 9.9 Eureka!—Light Is Electromagnetic Waves 9.10 A Review of the Discovery of the Invisible Parts of the Electromagnetic Spectrum 9.11 The Demise of the ‘Luminiferous Æther’ 9.12 Summary 10 Exploring the Electromagnetic Spectrum 10.1 Spectra and Spectral Lines 10.2 The Discovery of Helium—First in the Sun, Then on Earth 10.3 The Discovery That Spectral Lines Are Mathematically Related 10.4 Heinrich Hertz’s Confirmation of Maxwell’s Ideas 10.5 Marconi Makes the Electromagnetic Spectrum a Tool for Civilization 10.6 Human Use of the Electromagnetic Spectrum for Communication, Locating Objects, and Cooking 10.7 Summary 11 The Origins of Climate Science—The Idea of Energy Balance 11.1 What Is Heat? 11.2 Thermodynamics 11.3 The Laws of Thermodynamics 11.4 The Discovery of Greenhouse Gases 11.5 Kirchhoff’s ‘Black Body’ 11.6 Stefan’s Fourth Power Law 11.7 Black Body Radiation 11.8 Summary 12 The Climate System 12.1 Insolation—The Incoming Energy from the Sun 12.2 Albedo—The Reflection of Incoming Energy Back into Space 12.3 Reradiation—How the Earth Radiates Energy Back into Space 12.4 The Chaotic Nature of the Weather 12.5 The Earthly Components of the Climate System: Air, Earth, Ice, and Water 12.6 The Atmosphere 12.7 The Hydrosphere 12.8 The Cryosphere 12.9 The Land 12.10 Classifying Climatic Regions 12.11 Uncertainties in the Climate Scheme 12.12 Summary 13 What Is at the Bottom of Alice’s Rabbit Hole? 13.1 Max Planck and the Solution to the Black Body Problem 13.2 The Photoelectric Effect 13.3 The Bohr Atom 13.4 Implications of the Bohr Model for the Periodic Table of the Elements 13.5 The Zeeman Effect 13.6 Trying to Make Sense of the Periodic Table 13.7 The Second Quantum Revolution 13.8 The Discovery of Nuclear Fission 13.9 Molecular Motions 13.10 Summary 14 Energy from the Sun—Long-Term Variations 14.1 The Faint Young Sun Paradox 14.2 The Energy Flux from the Sun 14.3 The Orbital Cycles 14.4 The Rise and Fall of the Orbital Theory of Climate Change 14.5 The Resurrection of the Orbital Theory 14.6 Correcting the Age Scale: Filling in the Details to Prove the Theory1 14.7 The Discovery that Milankovitch Orbital Cycles Have Affected Much of Earth History 14.8 Summary 15 Solar Variability and Cosmic Rays 15.1 Solar Variability 15.2 The Solar Wind 15.3 Solar Storms and Space Weather 15.4 The Solar Neutrino Problem 15.5 The Ultraviolet Radiation 15.6 Cosmic Rays 15.7 A Digression into the World of Particle Physics 15.8 How Cosmic Rays Interact with Earth’s Atmosphere 15.9 Carbon-14 15.10 Beryllium-10 15.11 Cosmic Rays and Climate 15.12 Summary 16 Albedo 16.1 Albedo of Planet Earth 16.2 Clouds 16.3 Could Cloudiness Be a Global Thermostat? 16.4 Volcanic Ash and Climate Change 16.5 Aerosols 16.6 Albedo During the Last Glacial Maximum 16.7 Changing the Planetary Albedo to Counteract Greenhouse Warming 16.8 Summary 17 Air 17.1 The Nature of Air 17.2 The Velocity of Air Molecules 17.3 Other Molecular Motions 17.4 The Other Major Component of Air—Photons 17.5 Ionization 17.6 The Scattering of Light 17.7 Absorption of the Infrared Wavelengths 17.8 Other Components of Air: Subatomic Particles 17.9 Summary 18 HoH—The Keystone of Earth’s Climate 18.1 Some History 18.2 Why Is HOH So Strange? 18.3 The Hydrologic Cycle 18.4 Vapor 18.4.1 Pure Water 18.5 Natural Water 18.6 Water—Density and Specific Volume 18.7 Water—Surface Tension 18.8 Ice 18.9 Earth’s Ice 18.10 How Ice Forms from Freshwater and from Seawater 18.11 Snow and ICE on Land 18.12 Ice Cores 18.13 Ice as Earth’s Climate Stabilizer 19 The Atmosphere 19.1 Atmospheric Pressure 19.2 The Structure of the Atmosphere 19.3 The Troposphere 19.4 The Stratosphere 19.5 The Mesosphere 19.6 The Thermosphere 19.7 The Exosphere 19.8 The Magnetosphere 19.9 The Ionosphere 19.10 The Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect 19.11 Th

Note: Contents: Introduction. - 1. Coastlines as zones of interaction among geological processes, climate change, and socioeconomic development? - Modeling opportunities / J. Harff, W. W. Hay, and D. F. Tetzlaff. - Models describing the driving forces of coastal change and effects of their interrelation. - 2. Postglacial coastal evolution: Ice-ocean-solid Earth interactions in a period of rapid climate change / W. R. Peltier. - 3. Simulation of the Eemian interglacial and possible mechanisms for the glacial inception / F. Kaspar and U. Cubasch. - 4. Predicting seabed change as a function of climate change over the next 50 yr in the Australian southeast / F. Li, C. P. Dyt, C. M. Griffiths, and K. L. McInnes. - 5. Interaction among sedimentation, compaction, and groundwater flow in coastal settings / D. M. Tetzlaff and M.-T. Schafmeister. - Model areas. - The Arctic and the Northern Hemisphere. - 6. The Laptev Sea system since the Last Glacial / H. Kassens, J. Thiede, H. A. Bauch, J. A. Hoelemann, I. Dmitrenko, S. Pivovarov, S. Priamikov, L. Timokhov, and C. Wegner. - 7. The evolution and degradation of coastal and offshore permafrost in the Laptev and Eastern Siberian Seas during the last climatic cycle / P. P. Overduin, H.-W. Hubberten, V. Rachold, N. Romanovskii, M. Grigoriev, and M. Kasymskaya. - 8. Climate and the migration of early peoples into the Americas / R. Hetherington, A. J. Weaver, and Á. Montenegro. - Marginal seas. - 9. The Baltic Sea coast - A model of interrelations among geosphere, climate, and anthroposphere / J. Harff, W. Lemke, R. Lampe, F. Lüth, H. Lübke, M. Meyer, F. Tauber, and U. Schmölcke. - 10. Southern Baltic Sea level oscillations: New radiocarbon, pollen, and diatom evidences of from the Puck Lagoon (Poland) / S. Uscinowicz, J. Zachowicz, G. Miotk-Szpiganowicz, and A. Witkowski. - 11. Modelling Holocene coastal erosion and sediment supply in the western North Sea / J. G. Rees, R. Newsham, and C. D. R. Evans. - 12. A Black Sea lowstand at 8500 yr B.P. indicated by a relict coastal dune system at a depth of 90 m below sea level / G. Lericolais, I. Popescu, F. Guichard, and S. Popescu. - 13. Sinis Peninsula (western Sardinia, Italy) coastal system analysis using hydrodynamic and remote sensing techniques / A. Atzeni, D. Pani, and N. Ibba. - 14. A long-term morphological modeling study on the evolution of the Pearl River Delta, network system, and estuarine bays since 6000 yr B.P. / C. Y. Wu, J. Ren, Y. Bao, Y. P. Lei, and H. Y. Shi. - Index.