Abrupt climate change

Abrupt climate change or abrupt climate change, including climate jump, describes the rapid climate change to a new climate state. A climate change has serious impacts on habitats in the environment, because ecosystems must adapt to new climatic conditions in a short time again. Examples of abrupt climate change are often described in the literature as Dansgaard -Oeschger event or Heinrich event. An abrupt climate change could be observed for example in the context of the Younger Dryas. An extreme and extremely rapid climate change took place during the Paleocene / Eocene temperature maximum.

Air proxy the last 100,000 years documenting strong climate changes within decades or a few years. In order to reconstruct the dynamics and impacts of abrupt climate change in the habitat of the people better, help specifically lake or ocean sediments. Here also the atmospheric circulation plays a larger role than previously thought.

Definition

The committee of the National Research Council for the Abrupt climate change has placed two definitions to explain abrupt climate change. The first definition provides the instructions to the formation of abrupt climate change and the latter deals with the exploration of.

• The physical process: A transition of the climate system in a new mode, the change is faster than the responsible radiative forcing.
• Effects: An abrupt climate change occurs when it happens rapidly and unexpectedly and human and natural systems have problems to adapt ..

Causes

There are several mechanisms that can cause an abrupt climate change. Drastic changes in ocean currents can trigger immediate regional climate changes. Another mechanism is based on the assumption that dissolve large amounts of methane as a result of ocean warming from methane - rich sediments and permafrost. Consequently, it would come to a rise in global average temperature, because methane is a potent greenhouse gas. This would also contribute to warming and could thus cause a strong feedback effect in the climate system. Research results indicate that this happened during the Paleocene / Eocene temperature maximum. The global warming potential of 1 kg of methane is considered a period of 100 years, 25 times higher than that of 1 kg of carbon dioxide; according to a recent study, this factor is even 33 when interactions are taken into account with atmospheric aerosols.