Principles of planetary climate / Raymond T. Pierrehumbert

Preface.. Acknowledgements.. Notation.. 1 The Big Questions.. 1.1 Overview.. 1.2 Close to home.. 1.3 Into deepest time: Faint Young Sun and habitability of the Earth.. 1.4 Goldilocks in space: Earth, Mars, and Venus.. 1.5 Other Solar System planets and satellites.. 1.6 Farther afield: extrasolar planets.. 1.7 Digression: about climate proxies.. 1.8 The Proterozoic climate revisited: Snowball Earth.. 1.9 The hothouse/icehouse dichotomy.. 1.10 Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles.. 1.11 Holocene climate variation.. 1.12 Back to home: global warming.. 1.13 The fate of the Earth and the lifetime of biospheres.. 1.14 Workbook.. 1.15 For further reading.. 2 Thermodynamics in a nutshell.. 2.1 Overview.. 2.2 A few observations.. 2.3 Dry thermodynamics of an ideal gas.. 2.4 Static stability of inhomogeneous mixtures.. 2.5 The hydrostatic relation.. 2.6 Thermodynamics of phase change.. 2.7 The moist adiabat.. 2.8 Workbook.. 2.9 For further reading.. 3 Elementary models of radiation balance.. 3.1 Overview.. 3.2 Blackbody radiation.. 3.3 Radiation balance of planets.. 3.4 Ice-albedo feedback.. 3.5 Partially absorbing atmospheres.. 3.6 Optically thin atmospheres: the skin temperature.. 3.7 Workbook.. 3.8 For further reading.. 4 Radiative transfer in temperature-stratified atmospheres.. 4.1 Overview.. 4.2 Basic formulation of plane-parallel radiative transfer.. 4.3 The gray gas model

4.4 Real gas radiation: basic principles.. 4.5 Real gas OLR for all-troposphere atmospheres.. 4.6 Another look at the runaway greenhouse.. 4.7 Pure radiative equilibrium for real gas atmospheres.. 4.8 Tropopause height for real gas atmospheres.. 4.9 The lesson learned.. 4.10 Workbook.. 4.11 For further reading.. 5 Scattering.. 5.1 Overview.. 5.2 Basic concepts.. 5.3 Scattering by molecules: Rayleigh scattering.. 5.4 Scattering by particles.. 5.5 The two-stream equations with scattering.. 5.6 Some basic solutions.. 5.7 Numerical solution of the two-stream equations.. 5.8 Water and ice clouds.. 5.9 Things that go bump in the night: Infrared scattering with gaseous absorption.. 5.10 Effects of atmospheric solar absorption.. 5.11 Albedo of snow and ice.. 5.12 Workbook.. 5.13 For further reading.. 6 The surface energy balance.. 6.1 Overview.. 6.2 Radiative exchange.. 6.3 Basic models of turbulent exchange.. 6.4 Similarity theory for the surface layer.. 6.5 Joint effect of the fluxes on surface conditions.. 6.6 Global warming and the surface budget fallacy.. 6.7 Mass balance and melting.. 6.8 Precipitation-temperature relations.. 6.9 Simple models of sea ice in equilibrium.. 6.10 Workbook.. 6.11 For further reading.. 7 Variation of temperature with season and latitude.. 7.1 Overview.. 7.2 A few observations of the Earth.. 7.3 Distribution of incident solar radiation.. 7.4 Thermal inertia.. 7.5 Some elementary orbital mechanics.. 7.6 Effect of long-term variation of orbital parameters.. 7.7 A palette of planetary seasonal cycles.. 7.8 Workbook.. 7.9 For further reading

8 Evolution of the atmosphere.. 8.1 Overview.. 8.2 About chemical reactions.. 8.3 Silicate weathering and atmospheric CO2.. 8.4 Partitioning of constituents between atmosphere and ocean.. 8.5 About ultraviolet.. 8.6 A few words about atmospheric chemistry.. 8.7 Escape of an atmosphere to space.. 8.8 Workbook.. 8.9 For further reading.. 9 A peek at dynamics.. 9.1 Overview.. 9.2 Horizontal heat transport.. 9.3 Dynamics of relative humidity.. 9.4 Dynamics of static stability.. 9.5 Afterword: endings and beginnings.. 9.6 Workbook.. 9.7 For further reading.. Index

This book introduces the reader to all the basic physical building blocks of climate needed to understand the present and past climate of Earth, the climates of Solar System planets, and the climates of the newly discovered extrasolar planets. These building blocks include thermodynamics, infrared radiative transfer, scattering, surface heat transfer, and various processes governing the evolution of atmospheric composition. General phenomena such as Snowball Earth states, habitability zones, and the Runaway Greenhouse are used to illustrate the interplay of the basic building blocks of physics. The reader will also acquire a quanti- tative understanding of such key problems as the Faint Young Sun, the nature of Titan's cold liquid-methane hydrological cycle, and the warm, wet Early Mars climate, in addition to phenomena related to anthro- pogenic global warming on Earth, Earth's glacial-interglacial cycles, and their analogs on other planets. Exploration of simple analytical solutions is used throughout as a means to build the intuition needed to interpret the behavior of more complex phenomena requiring numerical simulation. Where numerical sim- ulation is necessary, all necessary algorithms are developed in the text, and implemented in user-modifiable software modules supplied in the online supplement to the book. Nearly 400 problems are supplied to help consolidate the reader's understanding, and to lead the reader towards original research on planetary climate. This textbook is invaluable for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students in atmospheric science, Earth and planetary science, astrobiology, and physics. It also provides a superb reference text for researchers in these subjects, and is very suitable for academic researchers trained in physics or chem- istry who wish to rapidly gain enough background to participate in the excitement of the new research opportunities opening in planetary climate. eng