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Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a 'greenhouse gas' and contributes
significantly to global warming. The amount of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere depends on human activities, such as burning fossil
fuel, and also the behaviour of the ocean and terrestrial biosphere.
Understanding how the global carbon cycle works is essential for
us to predict how it, and the climate system, may behave in the
future. The coupled climate-carbon cycle project at the Hadley Centre
addresses this issue by including models of the carbon cycle within
its existing climate models.
The following pages aim to describe the role of the carbon cycle
in climate change, how the models represent it, and what the results
are when these models are included in climate change simulations.
- Introduction. A discussion of the role of the global
carbon cycle in climate, and a description of both the ocean and
land based components of it.
- Models. Descriptions of the ocean and terrestrial carbon
cycle models, and how they are included in existing climate models.
- Results. Results from several experiments with the coupled
climate-carbon cycle model are presented here. The model predicts
accelerated global warming due to feedbacks between the climate
and the carbon cycle. Some validation results are also shown,
which describe how we assess whether the model is realistic.
- Ongoing research. We are continually working to improve
our understanding of the global carbon cycle. These links describe
recent or planned research and improvements to the models.
- References. list of references
cited within thes pages
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