The Climate system is an extremely complex one, and it is necessary to understand its structure before analysing its dynamics and trying to make some projections of it.
A key component of the Climate system is the ocean-atmosphere interface. The oceans cover 70 % of the Earth surface, and the Pacific Ocean is the largest among them. At its interface with the atmosphere, heat and mass transfer of water vapor and CO2 take place. In its seat, complex phenomena like El Nino – La Nina oscillations, changes in thermohaline interface depth, conveyor belt and circum-polar circulations develop and spread. While in the atmosphere, above the ocean, Trade Winds, Walker Circulation, Hadley and Polar Cells move considerable masses of humid air, contributing, by this way, to changes in the local cloud coverage. Underwater and surface volcanism, and underwater hot vents, along the ring of fire and at the junction of tectonic plates, emit, intermittently and rather at unpredictable interval, enormous quantities of heat, water vapor, and smaller quantities of Sulphur dioxide and CO2 in the ocean and /or to the atmosphere. Also, the incoming solar radiative energy changes itself over time in a cyclic way, and is modulated by the albedo of the cloud coverage. All those factors may be combined and represented as nodes (or “concepts”) in a tentative complex network; in which these nodes are linked by tentative causal edges (Fig. 1 overleaf).