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The five components of the climate system all interact. They are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. [1]: 1451 Earth's climate system is a complex system with five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things).
Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. [1] This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four spheres: the biosphere , hydrosphere / cryosphere , atmosphere , and geosphere (or lithosphere ).
The climate system can change due to internal variability and external forcings. These external forcings can be natural, such as variations in solar intensity and volcanic eruptions, or caused by humans. Accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mainly being emitted by people burning fossil fuels, is causing climate change.
While scientists knew of past climate change such as the ice ages, the concept of climate as changing only very gradually was useful for descriptive climatology. This started to change during the decades that followed, and while the history of climate change science started earlier, climate change only became one of the main topics of study for ...
Atmospheric carbon is exchanged quickly between the oceans and the terrestrial biosphere. This means that at times the atmosphere acts as a sink, and at other times as a source of carbon. [2] The following section introduces exchanges between the atmospheric and other components of the global carbon cycle.
A related phenomenon driven by climate change is woody plant encroachment, affecting up to 500 million hectares globally. [218] Climate change has contributed to the expansion of drier climate zones, such as the expansion of deserts in the subtropics. [219] The size and speed of global warming is making abrupt changes in ecosystems more likely ...
There are several conflicting usages of geosphere, variously defined. It may be taken as the collective name for the lithosphere , the hydrosphere , the cryosphere , and the atmosphere . [ 1 ] The different collectives of the geosphere are able to exchange different mass and/or energy fluxes (the measurable amount of change).
Atmospheric chemistry is a branch of atmospheric science in which the chemistry of the Earth's atmosphere and that of other planets is studied. It is a multidisciplinary field of research and draws on environmental chemistry, physics, meteorology, computer modeling, oceanography, geology and volcanology and other disciplines.