Monitoring of the climate system: purpose, features and tasks

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

The climate of our planet is the totality of all weather phenomena. Its main indicators are atmospheric pressure, air humidity, cloudiness and precipitation. A huge influence on how the climate will be in a certain area is also exerted by where the region is located. Depending on the position on the globe for different climates, different parts of the world are characterized by different air compositions and different indicators of atmospheric circulation. Land and sea, ocean currents, atmospheric masses, the gravitational influence of the Moon, the luminosity of the Sun - all this creates the most complex climate system on Earth. And in recent years, more and more attention has been paid to monitoring climate parameters. Why this is so, why we need climate monitoring, and what functions it performs - everything is described in this article.

History of weather tracking

The ability to predict the weather has always been important for humanity. The harvest depended on the rains shed on the earth, anddry years could easily be the cause of a real disaster. That is why knowing how and why the weather changes was incredibly important. In ancient times, no one was engaged in climate monitoring of weather and climate, this task lay with shamans, predictors and simply wise people who, over the years of their lives, have learned the patterns of weather phenomena. That is why beliefs and signs that predict the weather are still widespread among almost all peoples of the world.

Current time

In the XX and XXI century, the situation, of course, has changed dramatically. Climate monitoring today involves huge computing power, sophisticated instruments and equipment. Now the smallest changes in parameters that are hidden from the human eye are being read. For example, scientists who monitor weather and climate also monitor plate movements, magma accumulation, and more. And yet, in a time when we have ceased to depend so much on the harvest, and the rain that fell at the wrong time becomes only a minor nuisance - why do we monitor the climate?

Monitoring of climatic parameters

Although we have ceased to depend on the vagaries of the weather, in some ways the climate affects us even more than it did thousands of years ago. This, of course, is our own fault. Take, for example, ozone holes - people living under them are many times more at risk of skin cancer. Or the melting of ice, gradually raising the level of the world's oceans, which threatens to flood many coastal cities in the near future, also has an impact on us. And global warming? Scientistshave not yet decided: is it really our fault, or is our planet just going through such a natural cycle. Monitoring the climate system should help us answer this question.

Weather tracking is a multi-level system. Let's start with detailed monitoring, which tracks the change in literally one or two parameters within a very small ecosystem (for example, the level of drainage of a swamp). Local does the same, but on a larger scale. Regional monitoring monitors changes in climate, weather and environmental conditions of the entire region, national monitors the general ecological state of the country, and global, as the name implies, monitors the parameters of the whole world.

Classifications

The classification of monitoring systems is often based on differences in the method of observing climate. The first type is chemical monitoring, which monitors the chemical composition and its changes in the atmosphere, water masses, soils, sediments, vegetation, and even animals. It is about him that we most often hear when it comes to the sad state of the environment and the air.

The second is physical monitoring, which is not as visible as chemical monitoring, because it monitors parameters that rarely directly affect our lives, but can do so in the future - these are radiation, electromagnetic radiation and noise.

And the last - biological, it monitors the state of nature by bioindicators, that is, living organisms living in the environment, ranging frombacteria to large animals.

Main monitoring tasks

The main task, of course, is to identify anthropogenic changes in ecosystems, that is, caused by people. However, it is equally important to monitor the parameters that will help identify natural disasters at an early stage. For example, each active volcano is closely monitored and the moment of its eruption can be predicted with almost 100 percent accuracy. Earthquakes recorded in the ocean make it possible to learn about the approaching tsunami and evacuate people from the danger zone. Hurricanes, the birth and formation of which are now monitored from space, have long become perfectly predictable and much less dangerous than before. However, climate monitoring is not perfect, and humanity has room to grow in this area.

How is data collected?

To calculate the patterns of weather and climate by climate monitoring, you need to know history. Scientists study a variety of physical objects that shed light on what the weather was like thousands and millions of years ago. Deposits on the bottom of the seas and oceans, tree rings and much more reflect climate fluctuations over many thousands of years. Thanks to these discoveries, for example, radiocarbon analysis was invented, which allows you to accurately determine the age of the find. A comparison of the past climate with the present makes it possible to determine the level of anthropogenic effects. Naturally, scientists from all over the world are involved in such large-scale projects.countries.

About the weather

Climate weather monitoring is also an international activity. The data collected by artificial Earth satellites, as well as by thousands of meteorological observation stations, are sent to international data centers, where they are processed and analyzed. The weather predicted in this way is further distributed by national services and gets into the news reports of all countries. Since the weather is an extremely changeable phenomenon, data from the international center are requested several times a day and are constantly updated. You can more or less accurately determine the weather only for a day or two, but the accuracy of such predictions is not 100 percent, you can absolutely know the weather only 10-12 hours ahead. And for long-term forecasts, more statistical data on the weather of past years are used, which, of course, cannot give guarantees.

International monitoring

Back in 1975, by joining forces, the world community created a global environmental monitoring system - GEMS. Since then, the sphere of international relations has developed, and since the mid-2000s, an interstate project of the global system for studying the Earth has been implemented in the world, which is coordinated by the efforts of the Group on Earth Observations. More than 70 countries are participating in the long-term project, including Russia.

The main objective of the project is to accelerate the integration of most environmental data sources into a single information system. The development of computer technology already now makes it possible to combine a huge amount of data into a coherent system suitable for analysis and easy for the user. The success of the project in the distant future can be considered the creation of a system that automatically and with great accuracy predicts weather events and cataclysms.

Observation stations in Russia

Climate monitoring in the CIS is a highly developed industry. Currently, about 900 stations are monitoring the climate. Some of them have been operating since the times of the Soviet Union, and some were completed and equipped after the collapse. Of these, about 700 monitor the temperature of the atmosphere, and about 100 stations monitor air flows. All data received by them is recorded and processed on a monthly basis, and each archive with data undergoes a mandatory check for deviations, these deviations may occur due to a breakdown or malfunction of the device. About 230 stations send data to international centers every day.

In addition to the parameters needed to monitor climate and weather, Russia also collects global data. For example, data on changes in snow cover in European Russia, seasonal changes in floating ice in the Caspian Sea. Data are collected on the extent and volume of sea ice in Antarctica and in the western Arctic. All these parameters are extremely important for understanding global atmospheric processes.

The future of environmental monitoring

At the moment, climate monitoring has taken a big step forwardcompared to the previous century. However, much more needs to be done to improve and refine forecasts. For example, due to the imperfection of technology and mathematical models, it is currently extremely difficult to fully monitor the weather over the world's oceans. The weather and climate monitor is still carried out with the use of physically and morally obsolete equipment. Outdoor instruments at meteorological stations still include commonplace mercury thermometers and buckets to determine the amount of precipitation. Some countries do not participate in international climate monitoring projects, thereby reducing the amount of data received by mankind. There is ongoing debate about the economic feasibility of improving monitoring systems. The findings about the human impact on nature are often ignored, not all countries are taking at least some measures to improve the situation.

As a result, although mankind has advanced far in the issue of climate monitoring, it is still very far from the creation and implementation of full-fledged mathematical models that will predict at least the weather with great accuracy.