Changes in climate and climate variability have an effect on people's behaviour around the world, and public institutions have an important part to play in influencing our ability to respond to and plan for climate risk. We may be able to reduce climate risk by seeking to mitigate the threat on the one hand, and by adapting to a changed climate on the other. Another theme of the book is the integrated role of adaptation and mitigation in framing issues and performing analyses. Adaptation costs fall most heavily on the poor and special attention needs to be paid to adaptation by the poorest populations. An integrating framework is also presented to provide the context for an expansive typology of terms to apply to adaptation. The 12 papers collected here use methods from a variety of disciplines and focus on different time frames for decision making, from short term to the very long term. Readership: Technically trained readers familiar with the policy issues surrounding climate change and interested in learning the scientific underpinnings of issues related to societal adaptation.

The hydrological cycle of the Arctic Ocean has intimate and complex linkages to global climate: changes in one affect the other, usually with a feedback. The combined effects of large river runoff, advection of meteoric water, low evaporation rates and distillation by freezing contribute to the formation of a strong halocline in the upper Arctic ocean, which limits thermal communication between the sea ice and the warmer waters of Atlantic origin below. Sea ice and freshened surface waters are transported from the marginal seas by winds and currents, ultimately exiting the Arctic Ocean through Fram and Davis Straits. Variations in the freshwater outflow from these regions affect the density structure of the Arctic Ocean itself and so the surface heat balance. Another feedback is the effect these variations have on the density profile of the water column in the Greenland and Labrador seas where, at present, convection takes place mixing surface waters downwards with those at greater depth. This downward convective motion produces dense deep waters that flow outwards from these two centres and affect the entire North Atlantic.

21. Simulating Future Climate G. J. Boer 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489 2 International Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . 490 3 Simulating Historical and Future Climate 492 4 Climate Change in the 20th Century . . . 495 5 Simulating Future Climate Change 498 6 Climate Impact, Adaptation, and Mitigation 501 7 Summary . 502 Index 505 PREFACE Numerical modeling ofthe global atmosphere has entered a new era. Whereas atmospheric modeling was once the domain ofa few research units at universities or government laboratories, it can now be performed almost anywhere thanks to the affordability of computing power. Atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) are being used by a rapidly growing scientific community in a wide range of applications. With widespread interest in anthropogenic climate change, GCMs have a role also in informing policy discussions. Many of the scientists using GCMs have backgrounds in fields other than atmospheric sciences and may be unaware of how GCMs are constructed. Recognizing this explosion in the application of GCMs, we organized a two week course in order to give young scientists who are relatively new to the field of atmospheric modeling a thorough grounding in the basic principles on which GCMs are constructed, an insight into their strengths and weaknesses, and guid ance on how meaningful numerical experiments are formulated and analyzed. Sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other institu tions, this Advanced Study Institute (ASI) took place May 25-June 5, 1998, at II Ciocco, a remote hotel on a Tuscan hillside in Italy."

21. Simulating Future Climate G. J. Boer 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489 2 International Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . 490 3 Simulating Historical and Future Climate 492 4 Climate Change in the 20th Century . . . 495 5 Simulating Future Climate Change 498 6 Climate Impact, Adaptation, and Mitigation 501 7 Summary . 502 Index 505 PREFACE Numerical modeling ofthe global atmosphere has entered a new era. Whereas atmospheric modeling was once the domain ofa few research units at universities or government laboratories, it can now be performed almost anywhere thanks to the affordability of computing power. Atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) are being used by a rapidly growing scientific community in a wide range of applications. With widespread interest in anthropogenic climate change, GCMs have a role also in informing policy discussions. Many of the scientists using GCMs have backgrounds in fields other than atmospheric sciences and may be unaware of how GCMs are constructed. Recognizing this explosion in the application of GCMs, we organized a two week course in order to give young scientists who are relatively new to the field of atmospheric modeling a thorough grounding in the basic principles on which GCMs are constructed, an insight into their strengths and weaknesses, and guid ance on how meaningful numerical experiments are formulated and analyzed. Sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other institu tions, this Advanced Study Institute (ASI) took place May 25-June 5, 1998, at II Ciocco, a remote hotel on a Tuscan hillside in Italy."

This anthology of studies by the eminent geographer and climate scientist Eduard BrA1/4ckner (1862-1927) on anthropogenic climate change and the social, political and economic impact of climate variations on societies in historical times, assembles his pioneering work in English for the first time. The issues discussed by BrA1/4ckner are now considered to be among the most pressing facing modern society and climate research. At the turn of the twentieth century, BrA1/4ckner was one of the central protagonists in a vigorous debate in science and society about global climate variability and its political and economic significance. The studies published here were chosen to demonstrate BrA1/4ckner 's wide-ranging scientific interest in climate variability, his extensive empirical research and theoretical analysis of climate change, his assessment of contemporary analyses and thinking about anthropogenic climate change (such as the widespread concern about desiccation), and how he approached the questions of the transfer of scientific knowledge into society. In many ways BrA1/4ckner was a thoroughly modern scientist, convinced, for example, that the issue of climate change and its impact was of considerable scientific merit and that future climate changes are of great significance for the well-being of humankind as well as for the global balance of political and economic relations. BrA1/4ckner 's formidable ideas should have a significant impact on our present views of climate, climate variability and climate impact.

IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration) is the first NASA MIDEX mission and the first mission dedicated to imaging the Earth's magnetosphere. This volume offers detailed descriptions of the IMAGE instrumentation and of the image inversion techniques used to interpret the data. Also included are chapters on the IMAGE science objectives, the spacecraft design and capabilities, science and mission operations, and the processing and distribution of IMAGE's nonproprietary data products.

Methane is an important greenhouse gas that can cause global warming. The present concentrations of methane are nearly three times higher than several hundred years ago. Today, more than 60% of the atmospheric methane comes from human activities, including rice agriculture, coal mining, natural gas usage, biomass burning, and raising of cattle. Methane affects the stratospheric ozone layer and the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere, which in turn control the concentrations of many man-made and natural gases in the atmosphere. This book brings together our knowledge of the trends and the causes behind the increased levels of methane. Based on the scientific information on the sources and sinks, and the role of methane in global warming, strategies to limit emissions can be designed as part of a program to control future global warming.

JOHN L. INNES University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada The interactions between biomass burning and climate have been brought into focus by a number of recent events. Firstly, the Framework Convention on Climate Change and, more recently, the Kyoto Protocol, have drawn the attention of policy makers and others to the importance of biomass burning in relation to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Secondly, the use of prescribed fires has become a major management tool in some countries; with for example the area with fuel treatments (which include prescribed burns and mechanical treatments) having increased on US National Forest System lands from 123,000 ha in 1985 to 677,000 ha in 1998. Thirdly, large numbers of forest fires in Indonesia, Brazil, Australia and elsewhere in 1997 and 1998 received unprecedented media attention. Consequently, it is appropriate that one of the Wengen Workshops on Global Change Research be devoted to the relationships between biomass burning and climate. This volume includes many of the papers presented at the workshop, but is also intended to act as a contribution to the state of knowledge on the int- relationships between biomass burning and climate change. Previous volumes on biomass burning (e. g. Goldammer 1990, Levine 1991a, Crutzen and Goldammer 1993, Levine 1996a, 1996b, Van Wilgen et al. 1997) have stressed various aspects of the biomass-climate issue, and provide a history of the development of our understanding of the many complex relationships that are involved

ALEXANDER GILLESPIE & WILLIAM C.G. BURNS The idea for this book grew out of the Ecopolitics conference in Canberra, Australia in 1996. The conference captured the ferment of the climate change debate in the South Pacific, as well as some its potential implications for the region's inhabitants and e- systems. At that conference, one of the editors (Gillespie) delivered a paper on climate change issues in the region, as did Ros Taplin and Mark Diesendorf, who are also c- tributors to this volume. This book focuses on climate change issues in Australia, New Zealand, and the small island nations in the Pacific as the world struggles to cope with possible the impacts of environmental change and to formulate effective responses. While Australia and New Zealand's per capita emissions of greenhouse gases are among the highest in the world, their aggregate contributions are small. However, both nations may exert a disprop- tionate influence in the global greenhouse debate because their obstinate positions at recent conferences of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on C- mate Change (FCCC) may provide justification for other developed nations, as well as developing countries, to refuse to make meaningful reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions.

During the 1980's a wealth of information was reported from field and laboratory experiments in order to validate andlor modify various aspects of the surface layer Monin-Obukhov (M-O) similarity theory for use over the sea, and to introduce and test new concepts related to high resolution flux magnitudes and variabilities. For example, data from various field experiments conducted on the North Sea, Lake Ontario, and the Atlantic experiments, among others, yielded information on the dependence of the flux coefficients on wave state. In all field projects, the usual criteria for satisfying M-O similarity were applied. The assumptions of stationarity and homogeneity was assumed to be relevant over both small and large scales. In addition, the properties of the outer layer were assumed to be "correlated" with properties of the surface layer. These assumptions generally required that data were averaged for spatial footprints representing scales greater than 25 km (or typically 30 minutes or longer for typical windspeeds). While more and more data became available over the years, and the technology applied was more reliable, robust, and durable, the flux coefficients and other turbulent parameters still exhibited significant unexplained scatter. Since the scatter did not show sufficient reduction over the years to meet customer needs, in spite of improved technology and heavy financial investments, one could only conclude that perhaps the use of similarity theory contained too many simplifications when applied to environments which were more complicated than previously thought.

Discover the science behind wild and wonderful weather in this fact-packed book! Ever wondered what causes thunderstorms, how snowflakes form, or why our climate is changing? Get all the answers to these questions and more in this children's book about the weather! Inside the pages of this responsibly sourced science picture book from DK Books, you'll discover: - Beautiful illustrations to introduce scientific topics in a simple and accessible way - Stand out facts are presented clearly on each spread - Easy to understand text teaches children about climate change, meteorology, and geography - The science behind hot, cold, wet, and wild weather suitable for Key Stage 1 and 2 development From heatwaves and big freezes to tornadoes and fog, this science book gives your budding meteorologist a glimpse into all the action that happens in the sky. Learn about all kinds of weather and marvel at how powerful it can be! At a time when extreme weather is becoming more and more common, this eco-focused book is perfect for getting your little one clued up about the environment. Throughout the pages of this colourful and energetic STEM book, your child will discover fun facts about the weather. They will also learn everything there is to know about global warming, the seasons and even record-breaking weather phenomena! Become a Weather Expert in No Time This educational book tells a riveting story about how big, amazing, and wonderful our weather really is - but it's told from the child's perspective. The book itself has also been produced as sustainably as possible, made with responsibly sourced materials and soy inks. It's the perfect gift for environmentally conscious kids aged 5-9.

The author describes the stochastic (probabilistic) approach to the study of changes in the climate system. Climatic data and theoretical considerations suggest that a large part of climatic variation/variability has a random nature and can be analyzed using the theory of stochastic processes. This work summarizes the results of processing existing records of climatic parameters as well as appropriate theories: from the theory of random processes (based on the results of Kolmogorov and Yaglom) and Hasselmann's "stochastic climate model theory" to recently obtained results.

Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail, Or prone-descending rain. Wide-rent, the clouds Pour a whole flood, and yet, its flame unquenched, Th'unconquerable lightning struggles through. Ragged and fierce, or in red whirling balls, And fires the mountains with redoubled rage. Black from the stroke, above, the smould'ring pine Stands a sad shattered trunk; and, stretched below, A lifeless group the blasted cattle lie. James Thompson, "The Seasons" (1727) have been investigating ball lightning for more than two decades. I published a ball lightning report in Nature in 1976 that received worldwide publicity and I consequently many people wrote to me with accounts of their own experiences. Within a very short time, I had accumulated about 200 firsthand accounts, and the file has continued to grow steadily since then. Several things impressed me. Few of those who wrote to me had any detailed foreknowledge of ball lightning at the time of their observation. Nonetheless, once reports of other phenomena such as St. Elmo's fire had been eliminated, the remaining descriptions were remarkably consistent. Furthermore, nearly all who contacted me were keen to have an explanation of what they had seen and seemed entirely sincere.

Global climate change - rapid, substantial and human induced - may have radical consequences for life on earth. The problem is a complex one, however, demanding a multi-disciplinary approach. A simple cost-benefit analysis cannot capture the essentials, nor can the issue be reduced to an emissions reduction game, as the Kyoto process tries to do. It is much more sensible to adopt an integrative approach, which reveals that global climate change needs to be considered as a spider in a web, a triggering factor for a range of other, related problems - land use changes, water supply and demand, food supply, energy supply, human health, air pollution, etc. But an approach like this, which takes account of all items of knowledge, known and uncertain, does not produce clear-cut, final and popular answers. It does provide useful insights, however, which will allow comprehensive and effective long-term climate strategies to be put into effect. Climate Change: An Integrated Perspective will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. It is a useful source for the climate-change professionals, such as policy makers and analysts, natural and social scientists. It is also suitable for educationalists, students and indeed anyone interested in the fascinating world of multidisciplinary research underlying our approach to this global change issue.

Various problems in climate research, which require the use of advanced statistical techniques, are considered in this book. The examples emphasize the notion that the knowledge of statistical techniques alone is not sufficient. Good physical understanding of the specific problems in climate research is needed to guide the researcher in choosing the right approach to obtain meaningful answers. The second edition of this book, originally based on contributions given during a school sponsored by the European Union on the Italian island of Elba, continues to be based on these general principles. The general outline has been kept the same, covering aspects such as the examination of the observational record, stochastic climate models, analytical techniques, e.g. EOF, teleconnections and so on, but the chapters have been revised and updated, in some cases extensively, to cover the advances in the field in the years since the first edition.

A multidecadal cooling is known to have occurred in Europe in the final decades of the sixteenth-century. It is still open to debate as to what might have caused the underlying shifts in atmospheric circulation and how these changes affected societies. This book is the fruit of interdisciplinary cooperation among 37 scientists including climatologists, hydrologists, glaciologists, dendroclimatologists, and economic and cultural historians. The known documentary climatic evidence from six European countries is compared to results of tree-ring studies. Seasonal temperature and precipitation are estimated from this data and monthly mean surface pressure patterns in the European area are reconstructed for outstanding anomalies. Results are compared to fluctuations of Alpine glaciers and to changes in the frequency of severe floods and coastal storms. Moreover, the impact of climate change on grain prices and wine production is assessed. Finally, it is convincingly argued that witches at that time were burnt as scapegoats for climatic change.

This sixth volume in the ISSI Space Sciences series is the outcome of a process of carrying out the ISSI study project on source and loss processes of magnetospheric plasma. The goal has been to give an authoritative overview of all aspects of the topic in a well-organized form, for active researchers in the field and for young scientists who are starting their research in space physics. In order to represent the full diversity of experience and perspective that exists in the science community, some 50 leading scientists from all over the world were invited to participate in the project and contribute to the text.

Are extreme weather events becoming more common? How do extreme weather events impact society? These are critical questions that must be examined as we confront the possibility that the world will experience a change in climate over the next century. Much of the research in climatology over the past decade has focused on potential changes in long- term averages of temperature, precipitation and other factors. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that changes in average values will be accompanied by changes in extreme events. Furthermore, extreme weather events will impact society to a greater extent as people around the world continue to locate in more hazard-prone areas such as coastal zones. This book represents a major step forwards in developing a comprehensive set of information about changes in extreme events by providing a review of the problems in data availability, quality and analysis that make deriving a clear picture of world-wide changes in extreme events so difficult. Audience: The book is intended for policy-makers, professionals, graduate students and others interested in learning how extreme weather events have changed, and how they impact society both now and in the future.

Climate change is one of the major environmental concern of many countries in the world. Negotiations to control potential climate changes have been taking place, from Rio to Kyoto, for the last five years. There is a widespread consciousness that the risk of incurring in relevant economic and environmental losses due to climate change is high. Scientific analyses have become more and more precise on the likely impacts of climate change. According to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, current trends in greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions may indeed cause the average global temperature to increase by 1-3. 5 DegreesC over the next 100 years. As a result, sea levels are expected to rise by 15 to 95 em and climate zones to shift towards the poles by 150 to 550 km in mid latitudes. In order to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change, the IPCC report concludes that a stabilization of atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide - one of the major GHGs - at 550 parts per million by volume (ppmv) is recommended. This would imply a reduction of global emissions of about 50 per cent with respect to current levels. In this context, countries are negotiating to achieve a world-wide agreement on GHGs emissions control in order to stabilize climate changes. Despite the agreement on targets achieved in Kyoto, many issues still remain unresolved.

Global Climate Change and Cold Regions Ecosystems provides information on soil processes and the carbon cycle in cold ecoregions as well as the soil carbon pool and its fluxes in the soils of cold ecoregions. Filling a void in this area of soil science, this resource explains soil processes influencing C dynamics under natural and disturbed ecosystems. The soils of the cold region ecosystems serve as a net sink of atmospheric C. However, an increase in global temperature could render them a net source. In the event of global warming, the cold regions ecosystems-arctic, sub-arctic, alpine, Antarctic, boreal forests, and peatlands-will undergo radical changes. Potential environmental change could drastically increase the active soil layer and influence the large C pool found in them. Topics include: soil C pools in different cold ecoregions, the impact of natural and anthropogenic disturbances on the soil C pool, the method of assessment of C and other properties of soils of the cold regions ecosytems while focusing on the fate of C in permafrost soils. Global Climate Change and Cold Regions Ecosystems covers the current and possible future effects of the cold ecoregions soil C pool on the global carbon pool.

Present policy issues concern the reduction of ozone levels by controlling its precursors, NOx and volatile organic compounds (VOC). VOC are emitted from anthropogenic and biogenic sources. Whereas our understanding of VOC emissions from anthropogenic sources has advanced significantly in recent years, there is still a lack of knowledge concerning the contribution of biogenic VOC to the budget of organic trace gases and their impact on the formation of ozone in the troposphere. Improving ozone reduction strategies in the future requires a detailed understanding of the chemical processes in the troposphere. This book comprises the results of atmospheric measurements obtained during the field campaign POPCORN (Photo-Oxidant Formation by Plant Emitted Compounds and OH Radicals in North-Eastern Germany) which was carried out to investigate the role and impact of biogenic trace gases on tropospheric chemistry. This volume describes meteorological situations and origins of air masses during the campaign, and presents measurements of a variety of trace gases, solar radiation and photolysis frequencies. Special attention is given to OH radical measurements and the in-situ comparison of the two OH measurement techniques.

This is the first book to provide a complete overview of aerosol physics in climate research, containing details of work carried out in the former Soviet Union that has not been fully recognised in the West.

Bangladesh faces many challenges. So long it has been mainly the traditional ones of socio economic development and eradication of poverty. Environment as a major factor in this process has only recently entered the scene. But even before environmental considerations in the development process has become the normal practice, the spectre of climate change has reared its ugly head. While Bangladesh is not unique among developing countries in being at the receiving end regarding the causes and consequences of climate change, both in the literal and allegorical sense of the term, the fact remains that it has made the prospects for sustainable socio-economic development in the country much more complex and formidable than before. Both for her own sake and the sake of the global community at large, therefore, Bangladesh has to initiate actions at various levels to face the challenge from now on. The present study is a part of that process. In 1996, the Governments of USA and Bangladesh together decided to initiate a comprehensive study on climate change in Bangladesh. A unique consortium of public and non-governmental research organisations with support from the relevant administrative arms of the Government carried out the study over 1996 and 1997. The report has been accepted by the Government and several of its recommendations are in the process of implementation. While the direction of climate change is broadly certain, its details leave much scope for speculation and interpretation."

As the Kyoto conference of the parties on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change once again underscored, man-made climate change has become one of the major challenges to our generation and many generations to come. Since scientific evidence on climate change can be seen as increasingly reliable, the focus of our attention has to turn more and more to the question of foreseeable damages and to possibilities to prevent and mitigate climate change. In other words, we need to analyse the economic aspects of man marle climate change and the policy options to prevent its most severe impacts. This book reports on the findings of an international workshop on these aspects of global climate change. It was organised by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, Germany on March 6th and 7th 1997. In the light of the ongoing international policy-making process on climate change, we decided to publish the report after the Kyoto conference from December Ist to 10th, 1997, to include the results of the conference, which emphasise the importance of economic aspects and economic policy options when it comes to addressing the problern of man-made climate change. Thus, this book went to press in February 1998 the moment we received the official version of the Kyoto Protocol, which is reproduced in the annex."

Since the greenhouse effect emerged as a predictable threat, necessitating the evalu ation of its future impact on the environment in the various parts of the globe, interest in the climate changes during the Holocene has gained momentum. The background can be summarized by the sentence: The past is a key to the future. As a matter of fact, this sentence is in the opposite direction, on the dimension of time, to the principle adopted by the founders of the science of geology. They proposed that geological processes in the present should be used as a key for understanding the past. Another reason for the interest in the history of the climate of the Holocene can be described as the renaissance of a modified deterministic approach to the inter relation between physical and human geography. This relates in the first place to the fact that various investigations, especially as carried out by Hubert Lamb, showed that the sequence of climate changes previously suggested by Blytt and Sernander for Europe and adopted by most Holocene climatologists was far too general, and that there were more climate changes during recent history than previously taken account of. In the second place it was found out that these changes had had an impact on the history of human communities. Thus, one can conclude that once the taboo on geographical determinism (i. e."