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Climate storyline approach
The climate storyline approach, introduced by Ted Shepherd and colleagues in 2018, represents climate uncertainty through physically self-consistent narratives of events, and was adopted by the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.
Climate teleconnection
A climate teleconnection is a linkage between atmospheric circulation changes in widely separated parts of the globe, expressed as significant relationships between weather anomalies thousands of miles apart.
Climate Vulnerable Forum
The Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), working alongside its Vulnerable Twenty (V20) finance ministers, is a coalition of about 70 climate-vulnerable developing countries founded in the Maldives in 2009.
Climate zone
Climate zone: a region defined by characteristic temperature and precipitation, chiefly via the Köppen-Geiger classification (A–E, 30 subtypes), plus building and agro-ecological zone schemes.
Climatic Research Unit email controversy
The Climatic Research Unit email controversy, known as Climategate, began in November 2009 when over 1,000 emails from the University of East Anglia were posted online.
Climatology
Climatology is the description and scientific study of climate, the long-term pattern of weather, treating the whole climate system, its variability, and change on all time scales; 30-year averages define its standard normals.
Clinoenstatite
Clinoenstatite is a monoclinic pyroxene mineral with the ideal formula Mg₂Si₂O₆, the low-temperature polymorph of enstatite, known from the Bonin Islands and used as a shock indicator in meteorites.
Clinoform
A clinoform is a sloping depositional surface, or the strata bounded by one, forming where sediment builds from shallow into deeper water; John L. Rich introduced the term in 1951.
Clinoptilolite
Clinoptilolite is a naturally occurring microporous aluminosilicate zeolite of the heulandite group, the most abundant natural zeolite, valued for ion exchange and adsorption in pet litter, animal feed, and wastewater treatment.
Clinozoisite
Clinozoisite is a calcium aluminum sorosilicate mineral, Ca₂Al₃(Si₂O₇)(SiO₄)O(OH), belonging to the epidote group; it is the monoclinic dimorph of zoisite and forms a solid-solution series with epidote.
CLIVAR
CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change) is a core project of the World Climate Research Programme, launched in 1995 to study the ocean's role in climate.
Cloud
A cloud is a visible mass of minute water droplets or ice crystals that forms when water vapor condenses in the atmosphere, ranging from thin high-altitude veils to thunderstorm towers.
Cloud albedo
Cloud albedo is the fraction of incoming solar radiation that a cloud reflects back to space; higher albedo leaves less energy to heat the surface, cooling the climate.
Cloud base
The cloud base is the lowest level at which the air within a cloud contains a perceptible quantity of cloud particles, a standard observation critical to aviation safety.
Cloud condensation nuclei
Cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) are tiny airborne aerosol particles, up to about one micrometer in size, on which water vapor condenses to form cloud droplets and influence climate.
Cloud feedback
Cloud feedback is the change in the radiative effects of clouds in response to warming, and the largest single source of uncertainty in projections of global warming.
Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project
The Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project (CFMIP) is a World Climate Research Programme project, founded in 2003, that coordinates model experiments on cloud feedbacks and climate sensitivity.
Cloud iridescence
Cloud iridescence, sometimes called a rainbow cloud, is an optical phenomenon in which thin clouds show patches of color, produced when small droplets or ice crystals diffract sunlight.
Cloud physics
Cloud physics, or cloud microphysics, is the branch of atmospheric science that studies how clouds form and evolve, covering droplet nucleation, ice formation, precipitation, and their climate effects.
Cloud seeding
Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that introduces particles such as silver iodide or dry ice into existing clouds to increase rain or snowfall.
Cloud-resolving model
A cloud-resolving model is a numerical atmospheric model that simulates clouds and convection explicitly on kilometer-scale grids, without a cumulus parameterization, sitting between global climate models and large-eddy simulations.
Cloudburst
A cloudburst is a sudden, torrential fall of rain over a small area, almost always from a convective shower or thunderstorm, commonly defined as 100 mm of rain per hour or more.
CloudSat
CloudSat was a NASA Earth-observation satellite, launched in 2006, that carried the first spaceborne millimeter-wavelength cloud radar, profiling the vertical structure of clouds for over 17 years.
Clumped isotope thermometry
Clumped isotope thermometry is a geochemical method that estimates the formation temperature of carbonate minerals from the abundance of heavy-isotope bonds, independent of the water the mineral grew from.
CMA-GFS
CMA-GFS, formerly GRAPES-GFS, is the China Meteorological Administration's global medium-range weather prediction model, operational since 2016 and upgraded in 2023 to version 4.0 with 0.125° resolution.
CMA-MESO
CMA-MESO, formerly GRAPES-MESO, is the China Meteorological Administration's operational high-resolution regional numerical weather prediction model, running at 3 km resolution over East Asia since 2020.
CMAQ
CMAQ, the Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System, is an open-source EPA suite first released in 1998 that simulates ozone, particulate matter, air toxics, and pollutant deposition nationwide.
CMCC-ESM
CMCC-ESM is an Earth system model developed by the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change in Italy; its current version, CMCC-ESM2, contributed historical and scenario simulations to CMIP6 used in international climate assessments.
CMIP3
CMIP3, the third phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, was a collection of global climate model simulations whose archived output supported the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.
CO2-equivalent
Carbon dioxide equivalent, abbreviated CO2e, is a unit expressing any greenhouse gas's emissions as the CO2 amount causing the same warming, using global warming potentials.