Abstract
A review is given of work done by the author and his colleagues over the past six years concerning attempts to model the evolution of the slow-response parts of the climatic system such as the global ice mass. The dynamics of these slow-response parts must be known to determine the consequences of changed boundary conditions or external forcing on the ultimate state of the complete climatic system. It is argued that whereas the faster-response atmospheric (weather) and surface oceanic variables are amenable to the application of models that are “physically based” on the thermo-hydrodynamic equations of geophysical fluid dynamics, the observed slowness of the major variations of ice mass, deep-ocean properties and the carbon cycle demand a new inductive approach. In this new approach one seeks to discover the fundamental laws governing the complete, complex, multi-domain slow system, that is, the slow climatic attractor. The key to this inductive approach is an ever-improving paleoclimatic record. A recently developed model of this attractor governing the three global variables of total ice mass, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and mean deep-ocean temperature is described.
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Saltzman, B. (1988). Modelling the Slow Climate Attractor. In: Schlesinger, M.E. (eds) Physically-Based Modelling and Simulation of Climate and Climatic Change. NATO ASI Series, vol 243. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3043-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3043-8_3
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