Lecture-1-Introduction to Climate Change.

Abstract

Climate of region represents the long-term average of weather (more than thirty years). It is a resultant of extremely complex system consisting of different meteorological variables, which vary with time. Climate in a narrow sense is defined as "average weather", or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of mean and variability of relevant quantities of weather parameters over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by WMO. These parameters are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind. The climate change is a very common word in the present day world. The common man, media and scientists all seem to be concerned with this phenomenon. It is generally because the mean global temperature of earth is showing an increasing trend. However, this might not be true in a regional scale, but enough evidences have been gathered showing this increasing trend of temperature. The important evidences include worldwide retreat of glaciers in all latitudes, rising of the mean sea level, breaking of Antarctic ice sheets etc. Such changes may have severe impact on mankind and all other living species. Such scenarios of projection have urged researchers from all over the world and of all fields of science to study the problem in a greater depth.