Understanding the Fundamentals of Climate Science & the Oceans—What Research Does and Does Not Tell Us
This talk is designed to provide climate science background to professionals who work in other fields of study. The transfer of energy between the ocean and atmosphere drives global weather patterns and climate variability, as the ocean contains close to 97% of Earth’s water and has absorbed more than 90% of the excess heating in the Earth system. These air-sea interactions are critical to large-scale weather and climate predictions because of the ocean’s ability to absorb the excess atmospheric heat and carbon and regulate exchanges of momentum, water vapor and heat between the ocean and atmosphere. In this talk, Dr. Clayson will discuss how the ocean impacts our weather and climate systems, and what we do and don’t know about our air-sea interactions. She will also talk about what changes we have seen in the last few decades, and discuss how these changes are affecting water moving through the ocean, atmosphere, land and back again. There are still gaps in our knowledge of this complicated part of our climate system, and we will talk about unknowns and new observations, models, and forecasts that are being developed to help us improve predictability for weather and climate information.
This talk is organized by the Climate and Human Security Studies Group.
About this Lecture
Lectures of Opportunity offer U.S. Naval War College (NWC) students, faculty, and staff an opportunity to learn more about national and international socio-political subjects that may be of relevance to the NWC community.