Abstract
The surface of the Earth is a three-dimensional system that is dominated by water that can exist in three phases: solid, liquid, and vapor. At any point in the evolution of the Earth’s climate, randomly varying factors such as winds, ocean currents, air masses, cloud formation, volcanic eruption, the spinning of the Earth, and other factors produce daily, monthly, and yearly fluctuations in the weather in various regions. If we average out these fluctuations over the whole Earth over a period of time, we can attempt to attribute a climate to the Earth over that time period. There is no universally accepted procedure for doing this.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rapp, D. (2014). Long-term climate change. In: Assessing Climate Change. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00455-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00455-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-00454-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-00455-6
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)