Weather and Climate System
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Background:
The physical environment of the Earth is a complex myriad of seemingly discrete variables, e.g. mountains, river valleys, hawks, polar bears, glacial ice, wind, saline ocean water, and on and on and on ... None of the these "separate" environmental entities exists beyond the physical influence of the others. This is the thrust (i.e. INTERACTION) of Berdichevsky's thesis or approach to the study of physical geography. Weather and climate are a part of that study.
Do some additional research (use a physical geography textbook, the Web - a Google search, etc.) to acquaint yourself with the concept of Earth's four geospheres. The Earth's atmosphere is one of these geospheres. Weather and climate are largely (although not entirely) associated with the atmosphere.
In defense of geography
Norman Berdichevsky
Geography is not a static inventory of unrelated facts. It explains and analyses why things are where they are and not somewhere else. Even if we have not personally experienced earthquakes, volcanoes, floods or famines we are all more aware today through television and sophisticated techniques of remote sensing of the changing face of the earth's surface - rivers change their course, mountains rise, coastlines sink, fertile crop land may become exhausted through poor techniques of cultivation and irrigation may make the desert bloom. Geographers should fault themselves for not having tried to make 'chorology' an everyday word. Today, not even scrabble players are familiar with it, yet it is intuitively understood and can help us appreciate analyzing the logic (logos) there is in the concept of place.
Nothing can be understood apart from the place where it occurs. No event, situation, problem in nature or human history has much meaning until it is examined against its geographical background. Geography studies the location, areal extent, distribution, frequency and interaction of all significant elements of the human and physical environment on the earth's surface. They are not just present or absent but found to co-exist in recognizable patterns. They do so not in random unpredictable relationships by accident or coincidence. Their distribution and areal extent, whether it is mineral wealth, traffic flows, good agricultural soils, pollution, health hazards, population growth, or economic development and political alliances, can often be explained and even predicted.
1. How are weather and climate examples of a system? Thank you.
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Solution Summary
Through discussion and example, this solution explains how weather and climate are examples of a system.
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Please refer to response attached, which is also presented below. I hope this helps and take care.
RESPONSE:
1. How are weather and climate examples of a system?
Weather and climate
The climate is the weather averaged over a long period of time. A descriptive saying is that "climate is what you expect, weather is what you get." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) glossary definition is:
"Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the "average weather", or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate System."[1] (http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/518.htm)
The exact boundaries of what is climate and what is weather are not well defined and depend on the application. For example, in some senses an individual El Niño event could be considered climate; in others, as weather. In a given geographical region, the climate generally does not vary over time on the scale of a human life span. However, over geological time, climate can vary considerably for a given place on the Earth. For example, Scandinavia has been through a number of ice ages over hundreds of thousands of years (the last one ending about 10,000 years ago). Paleoclimatology is the study of these past climates. In the original sense, climate is a concept used to divide the world into regions sharing similar climatic parameters. Climate regions can be classified on the basis of temperature and ...
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