Our Changing planet: The FY 1998 U.S. Global Change Research Program. An Investment in Science for the Nation's Future. A report by the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Committee on Environment and Natural Resources of the National Science and Technology Council, A supplement to the President's Fiscal Year 1998
✍ Scribed by Michael J. Rycroft
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 127 KB
- Volume
- 59
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1364-6826
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Climate change on decadal time scales can result from changes in the concentrations of (infrared) radiatively active gases and also from natural causes. The causes of the latter are not well known-that is the reason for the new WCRP experiment on climate variability, CLIVAR.
This book arising from a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in Les Houches, in the French Alps, during February 1995, covers the current state of knowledge.
The focus is on ocean-atmosphere interactions. J. M. Wallace (Seattle, U.S.A.) reviews observed climatic variability, both its time dependence (QBO, SOL principal component analysis) and spatial structure (empirical orthogonal functions, North Atlantic oscillation, ENSO, warmer continents and cooler oceans). T. N. Palmer (ECMWF, Reading, U.K.) considers predictability of the atmosphere and ocean on time scales ranging from days to decades in the nonlinear climate system which, fundamentally, is chaotic; the ENS0 seems to be predictable up to a year or so in advance. The upper troposphere (300 to 100 hPa) cooled by approx. 0.4"C from 1960 to 1990, according to radiosondes which are mainly launched over land rather than oceans. Rather than being associated with surface warming (radiatively, caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases), this could be the result of changes in large-scale atmospheric dynamics. Better-and proven---GCMs are required. E. S. Sarachik et al. (Seattle, U.S.A.) consider possible mechanisms-solar variability, volcanoes, anthropogenic aerosols, surface albedo changes-for climate variability on decadal to centennial time scales, together with stochastic climate models, coupled atmosphere-ocean modes, and the predictability of models. R. Dickson et al. (MAFF Fisheries Laboratory, U.K.) discuss long term changes in the convective activity of the North Atlantic Ocean. M. Latif et ul. (MPI for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany) present a mechanism for decadal climate variability at mid-latitudes caused by coupled ocean-atmosphere modes associated with slow changes of subtropical ocean gyres. L. Bengtsson (also MPI, Hamburg) considers the climate response resulting from changing concentrations of greenhouse gases, the predictions of various models and IPCC climate change scenarios: this is a particularly excellent chapter. J. Marotzke (MIT, U.S.A.) analyses thermohaline feedback mechanisms in coupled ocean-atmosphere models. T. F. Stocker (Bern, Switzerland) gives an overview of observations and models of climate variability on century and millennium time scales. D. Olbers and C. Volker (AWI, Bremerhaven.
Germany) consider Charney and De Vore type models of the ocean, especially the Antarctic circumpolar current. Finally, M. Ghil and P. Yiou (ENS, Paris, France) discuss the connections between time series analysis and non-linear dynamics, and present some novel methods for spectral analysis.