Climatic Variations and Variability: Facts and Theories

GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE ETTORE MAJORANA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL OF CLIMATOLOGY The "Ettore Majorana Centre" for Scientific Culture, founded at Erice in 1963 by prof. Nino Zichichi, pursues the fundamental aim to create in Europe a cultural forum of high scientific standard, which can allow young research workers to appreciate current problems of major interest in the various fields of scientific research. , Since the beginning, its International Schools (over 70, today) have actively worked in disseminating scientific culture produced at the most advanced frontiers of human knowledge, spanning varied domains from biology to nuclear physics, earth sciences, meteorology, architecture, medical sciences and so on, Recently, in 1979, the International School of Climatology has been created with the purpose to organize post-doctorate cour ,;es, in which outstanding and up-to-date outlooks, theories and results in the climatic field must be presented in didactic form. Climatic variability was the subject of the first Course, in that climatic changes represent one of the most exciting phenomenologies to study; in fact, even if the climate has changed many times in the past, so making it reasonable to as­ sume that it will do so in the future, it is still not easy to understand the above mentioned changes from an hydrodynamical point of view.

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I - Mathematical and Physical Basis of Climate.- The climate system and its portrayal by climate models: a review of basic principles. I. Physical basis of climate.- Climatic changes and variations: a geophysical problem.- The memory of the Ocean.- Surface albedo.- Glacial to interglacial changes in ocean and atmosphere chemistry.- II - Mathematical Techniques in Climate Reconstruction and Data Banks.- Transfer functions: calibrating micropaleontological data in climatic terms.- Statistical climatic reconstructions from tree-ring widths.- Data banks for climatological purposes.- III - Facts: Reconstruction of Past Climates.- Section 1 - Long-term climatic changes.- Palaeoclimatology before our ice age.- Oxygen isotope studies and Quaternary marine climates.- Palaeo-climatic studies on ice cores.- Pleistocene climates on land.- Tropical climate variations during Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.- Section 2 - Climates in historical times and instrumental period.- Climate of the last 1000 years.- Long series of temperature and precipitation in Europe.- Central England and De Bilt series.- Temperature changes in the last 100 years.- Variability of weather over approximately the last century.- Glacier behaviour and recent changes in Alpine climate.- Section 3 - Atmospheric circulation and case studies of climatic variations.- Atmospheric circulation and climatic change. I. Approaches to paleoclimatic reconstruction.- Atmospheric circulation and climatic change. II. Case studies.- Meteorological aspects of the 1975-76 drought in Western Europe.- Case studies of exceptional climate in United States 1975-1979 and air-sea interactions.- Sahel droughts: recent climatic fluctuations in North Africa and the Mediterranean.- IV - Theories of Climatic Variations and Their Modelling.- Section 1 - Spectrum.- Spectrum of climatic variations and possible causes.- Section 2 - Modelling.- The climate system and its portrayal by climate models: a review of basic principles. II. Modeling of climate and climatic change.- Energy-balance models: an introduction.- Construction and verification of stochastic climate models.- Section 3 - Theories.- Astronomical theory of paleoclimates.- Time-dependent models of the climatic response to orbital variations.- Internal climatic mechanisms participating in glaciation cycles.- Solar activity and climate.- Atmospheric aerosols and global climate.- V - Man's Impact on Climate.- Awareness of mankind as a factor in climatic change.- The carbon cycle.- The impact of energy production on atmospheric CO2-concentrations.- CO2 and climate - a continuing story.- Scenarios of cold and warm periods of the past.- Air pollution effects on climate at urban scale.- VI - Climate Impacts on Man.- Some impacts of desertification processes on the local and regional climate.- Climatic impacts on agriculture, water resources and economy.- VII - Summary-Review of the Lectures.- Techniques for reconstructing past climates.- Climate modelling.- Man's impact upon climate.