Earth Science and Climate Change

Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology

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Atmospheric physics draws on the processes by which the atmosphere affects Earth's energy balance. Atmospheric physics has links to climatology and meteorology and employs mathematical and physical models to study and understand the atmosphere, weather systems, atmospheric dynamics and energetics, electrical phenomena, and characteristics of the upper and middle atmospheric layers.  Atmospheric chemistry studies the chemical composition of the atmosphere. It is a multidisciplinary field and encompasses meteorology, environmental chemistry, geology, oceanography, volcanology and computer modeling, among other disciplines. Meteorology is an extremely interdisciplinary science, dealing with the study of the atmosphere including climate modeling, air quality, atmospheric physics, atmospheric effects on our weather, and other atmospheric phenomena. The relationship between the Earth’s climate, the atmosphere and the oceans is also studied. Climatology is a sub-discipline of atmospheric sciences concentrating on how changes in the atmosphere define and alter the climate of a region. The ozone layer present in the stratosphere plays a essential role in absorbing UV radiations of the sun. However, this layer is being gravely affected by the continual anthropogenic emissions of harmful compounds including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The ozone hole is not exactly a hole, but in fact, a thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer. The first appearance of a hole in the earth's ozone layer was discovered in 1976 over Antarctica. The ozone layer had diminished as the long lived CFC molecules catalyzed ozone destruction in the stratosphere. Models now predict that the ozone hole in Antarctica should recover around 2040.