New aspects of global climate-dynamics research and remote sensing

This paper presents a few of the research tools of modern physics that can successfully be used to achieve a better understanding of the temporal and spatial variability of the multi-component climate system. The observations obtained by the available remotely sensed instrumentation have led to new advances in climate science, which in conjunction with those reported in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report constitute the background of the existing knowledge on this subject and are discussed in the present special issue. There is some discussion of matters arising since the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was published. This paper provides the general background to the papers in this special issue of the journal on remote sensing and climate change.