Climatic Change is a rapidly evolving domain that has prompted the publication of numerous scientific works in recent years, reflecting both the public and scientific interest in the topic. This book focuses upon climate processes, variability and change and applies the general principles related to these issues, particularly in Switzerland. Although a small country, Switzerland is characterized by complex topography where climatic processes are often enhanced due to the presence of the Alps. In addition, there is a remarkable density of observational data in both the natural and social sciences that enable a comprehensive assessment of climate processes, their long-term trends and their impacts.

This book draws upon recent scientific work by the author, as well as by close colleagues working within scientific networks both in Switzerland and Europe, in order to provide the reader with up-to-date information on climate processes in the course of the 20th and 21st centuries.

This book is intended for students from the undergraduate level onwards and researchers interested in climate issues specific to the alpine region.

This book describes the state-of-the art instruments for measuring the solar irradiance from soft x-ray to the near infrared and the total solar irradiance. Furthermore, the SORCE mission and early results on solar variability are presented along with papers that provide an overview of solar influences on Earth. This collection of papers provides the only detailed description of the SORCE mission and its instruments.

In regions as densely populated as Western Europe, prediction of the ecological implications of pollutant transport are important in order to minimise damage in the case of accidents, and to evaluate the possible influence of existing or planned sources. In most cases, such predictions depend on high-speed computation. The present textbook presents a mathematically explicit introduction in eight chapters: 1: An introduction to the basics of fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and the local events and mesoscale processes. 2: The types of PDEs describing atmospheric flows for limited area models, the problem of appropriate boundary conditions describing the topographical constraints, and well-posedness. 3: Thermodynamics of the atmosphere, dry and wet, its stability, and radiation processes, budgets and the influence of their sum. 4: Scaling and similarity laws for stable and convective turbulent atmospheric boundary layers and the influence of inhomogeneous terrain on the advection and the vertical dispersion, and the method of large eddy simulation. 5: Statistical processes in turbulent dispersion, turbulent diffusion and chemical reactions in fluxes. 6: Theoretical modelling of diffusion and dispersion of pollutant gases. 7: The influence of urban heat production on local climate. 8: Atmospheric inversion layers and lapping inversion, the stable boundary layer and nocturnal inversion.

Soil carbon sequestration can play a strategic role in controlling the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere and thereby help mitigate climatic change. There are scientific opportunities to increase the capacity of soils to store carbon and remove it from circulation for longer periods of time. The vast areas of degraded and desertified lands throughout the world offer great potential for the sequestration of very large quantities of carbon. If credits are to be bought and sold for carbon storage, quick and inexpensive instruments and methods will be needed to monitor and verify that carbon is actually being added and maintained in soils. Large-scale soil carbon sequestration projects pose economic and social problems that need to be explored. This book focuses on scientific and implementation issues that need to be addressed in order to advance the discipline of carbon sequestration from theory to reality. The main issues discussed in the book are broad and cover aspects of basic science, monitoring, and implementation. The opportunity to restore productivity of degraded lands through carbon sequestration is examined in detail. This book will be of special interest to professionals in agronomy, soil science, and climatology.

This volume is based on a workshop on "Effects of accumulation of air pollutants in forest ecosystems'; held in GOttingen, Federal Republic of Germany, from May 16-18, 1982. This work'shop was initiated and sponsored by the Environmental Agency of the Federal Republic of Germany (project officer: Dr. J. Pankrath) as part of a research contract (project leader: Dr. B. Ulrich). THE PROBLEM SEEN UNDER THE ASPECT OF ADMINISTRATION The problem of forest damage caused by air pollution is not new in Europe. Already in 1983 a comprehensive report from Schroeder and Reuss about vegetation damages by fume in the Harz mountains was published. In 1923, Prof. Dr. Julius Stocklasa of the Bohemian Technical Highschool in Prague was concerned with research of toxical effects of sulphur dioxide in his publication "The damage of vegetation by flue gas and exhalations of facili ties." This comprehensive and instructive work concludes with the sentence: "It is already high time for the governments of all cultural states to take legal, police and private measures in order to prevent damage by flue gases." In the neighbourhood of industries with high gaseous and dust emissions damages have been shown to occur for a long timei these deleterious effects have influenced the growth of trees and in extreme cases have even caused their early death."

The scientific community has voiced two general concerns about the future of the earth. Climatologists and oceanographers have focused on the changes in our physical environment -- changes in the climate, the oceans, and the chemistry of the air we breathe. Environmental biologists, on the other hand, have addressed issues of conservation and the extinction of species. There is increasing evidence that these two broad concerns are intertwined and mutually dependent. Past changes in biodiversity have both responded to and caused changes in Earth's environment. In its discussions of ten key terrestrial biomes and freshwater ecosystems, this volume uses our broad understanding of global environmental change to present the first comprehensive scenarios of biodiversity for the twenty-first century. Combining physical earth science with conservation biology, Global Biodiversity in a Changing Environment provides a starting point for regional assessments on all scales. The book will be of interest to those concerned with guiding research on the changing environment of the earth and with planning future policy, especially in accordance with the Global Biodiversity Convention.

The enormous progress over the last decades in our understanding of the mechanisms behind the complex system "Earth" is to a large extent based on the availability of enlarged data sets and sophisticated methods for their analysis. Univariate as well as multivariate time series are a particular class of such data which are of special importance for studying the dynamical p- cesses in complex systems. Time series analysis theory and applications in geo- and astrophysics have always been mutually stimulating, starting with classical (linear) problems like the proper estimation of power spectra, which hasbeenputforwardbyUdnyYule(studyingthefeaturesofsunspotactivity) and, later, by John Tukey. In the second half of the 20th century, more and more evidence has been accumulated that most processes in nature are intrinsically non-linear and thus cannot be su?ciently studied by linear statistical methods. With mat- matical developments in the ?elds of dynamic system's theory, exempli?ed by Edward Lorenz's pioneering work, and fractal theory, starting with the early fractal concepts inferred by Harold Edwin Hurst from the analysis of geoph- ical time series, nonlinear methods became available for time seriesanalysis as well. Over the last decades, these methods have attracted an increasing int- est in various branches of the earth sciences. The world's leading associations of geoscientists, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the European Geosciences Union (EGU) have reacted to these trends with the formation of special nonlinear focus groups and topical sections, which are actively present at the corresponding annual assemblies.

The Hadley and Walker Circulations are fundamental regulators of the Earth's energy budget. Although the Hadley Circulation is a well-known concept, surprisingly little attention has been paid to understanding both short and long-term variability of the system. This book reviews current knowledge of Hadley and Walker circulation dynamics and their interactions with the major global monsoon systems, and evaluates paleoclimatic records within the domain of the Hadley Circulation that shed light on past variability of climate over the last 1000 years, the Holocene (the last 11,500 years), glacial periods, and warm climate periods in the past. The book examines potentially important factors that may have affected the Hadley and Walker Circulations on these different time scales and evaluates changes in the Hadley Circulation and the monsoons as simulated by coupled models of past climate conditions, and predicted future conditions under an enhanced greenhouse effect. This book is meant to serve as a fundamental reference work for current and future researchers, graduate students in the atmospheric sciences and geosciences, and climate specialists involved in interdisciplinary research.

Part of the excitement in boundary-layer meteorology is the challenge associated with turbulent flow - one of the unsolved problems in classical physics. An additional attraction of the filed is the rich diversity of topics and research methods that are collected under the umbrella-term of boundary-layer meteorology. The flavor of the challenges and the excitement associated with the study of the atmospheric boundary layer are captured in this textbook. Fundamental concepts and mathematics are presented prior to their use, physical interpretations of the terms in equations are given, sample data are shown, examples are solved, and exercises are included.

The work should also be considered as a major reference and as a review of the literature, since it includes tables of parameterizatlons, procedures, filed experiments, useful constants, and graphs of various phenomena under a variety of conditions. It is assumed that the work will be used at the beginning graduate level for students with an undergraduate background in meteorology, but the author envisions, and has catered for, a heterogeneity in the background and experience of his readers.

This book provides an updated overview of the processes determining the influence of solar forcing on climate. It discusses in particular the most recent developments regarding the role of aerosols in the climate system and the new insights that could be gained from the investigation of terrestrial climate analogues. The book 's structure mirrors that of the ISSI workshop held in Bern in June 2005.

Since the beginning of industrialization in the last century, a steady increase in energy consumption can be observed. At the same time, energy generation switched from wood and coal to predominantly oil, coal and natural gas. Soon, many countries became aware of the fact that the resources of fossil fuels, especially of oil and natural gas are finite. Diversification of energy sources became a requirement for the future. Governments expressed their concern by setting up natural energy programmes while international organisations undertook assessments of the global energy resources and possible rates of supply and substitution. When it comes to setting up energy policies, the following factors must be taken into consideration: population growth, level and nature of socio-economic activity, the costs of energy, the adequacy and reliability of supply, the availability of technology and supporting infrastructure, the success of energy conservation programmes and concern about the environment, safety aspects of production and use of energy as well as educational efforts toward a rational use of energy. When we express our most urgent concern, the long-term global energy provision, experts offer four interrelated partial strategies: - the strategy of rational use and conservation of energy - the strategy of using renewable energy sources - the coal strategy including coal gasification and liquefaction - the nuclear power strategy. Any strategy, however, for securing future energy supply has, from my point of view, to be thoroughly examined as to its impact on the environment.

This book contains most of the invited papers and contributions pre sented at the Symposium/Workshop on Solar-Terrestrial Influences on Weather and Climate which was held at The Ohio State University on 24-28 July 1978. The authors and publisher have made a special effort for rapid publi cation. The length of the individual papers in this book were delib erately limited by the editors. Direct financial support for the Symposium/Workshop was provided by NASA. Palo Alto Billy M. McCormac Columbus Thomas A. Seliga January 1979 xiii SYMPOSIUH/WORKSHOP CONCLUSIONS Billy M. McCormac Department 52-l0/B202 Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory 3251 Hanover Street Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA Thomas A. Seliga Atmospheric Sciences Program The Ohio State University 2015 Neil Avenue Columbus, OH 43210 USA A. INTRODUCTION The Symposium/Workshop on Solar-Terrestrial Influences on Weather and Climate was held at The Ohio State University on 24-28 July 1978. Its purpose was to provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of recent research results and ideas regarding the question whether variations in solar outputs affect terrestrial weather and cli mate and, if so, to what extent and through what mechanisms. The Sym posium focused on the results of previous studies and consisted of both invited and contributed papers. The Workshop, on the other hand, built upon these deliberations to develop ideas and directions for future research. Over one hundred persons from eight countries attended the Symposium/ Workshop."

The need for climatological data of the North Sea has increased during the past years. The increase in offshore and recreational activities can benefit greatly from such data. In order to meet this need weather observations made by ships and lightvessels in the North Sea have been processed extensively, which has resulted in a large number of tables, charts, etc. with climatological data. This publication gives a selection of these data, in which the emphasis lies on wind and wave data. In addition, some characteristic data on air and sea tempera ture, cloud cover, precipitation, visibility and sea level pressure are given. With regard to the observations of the lightvessels the publication can be consi dered as a continuation of earlier work. It also concludes the era of observations made by crew on board lightvessels, which gradually ended in the 1970's. The observations on fixed platforms which are now replacing the observations of the lightvessels are of a quite different character. The data are based on observations made on board lightvessels during the period 0 1949 -1980 and voluntary observing ships in the area between 51 ON and 60 N during the period 1961-1980. The observations of the lightvessels have been compared with those published for earlier periods (1859 -1883, 1884 -1909 and 1910 -1940). The manuscript (or part of it) has been critically examined by Prof.Dr.Ir. J.A. Battjes, E. Bouws, Dr.Ir. J.A. Buishand, H.A.M. Geurts, Dr. GJ.Komen, Dr. G.P."

This monograph develops the theory of noise mechanisms and measurements, and describes general noise characteristics and computational methods. The vast ambient noise literature is concisely summarized using theory combined with key representative results.

The air sea boundary interaction zone is described in terms of nondimensional variables requisite for future experiments. Noise field coherency, rare directional measurements, and unique basin scale computations and methods are presented. The use of satellite measurements in these basin scale models is demonstrated. A series of appendices provides in-depth mathematical treatments which will be of interest to graduate students and active researchers.

The author introduces a small section of the frontier of the science of the atmosphere by describing experiments designed to clarify what occurs when the atmosphere interacts with the surface of the sea.

The second edition of this book has been completely updated. It studies the history and gives an analysis of extreme climate change on Earth. In order to provide a long-term perspective, the first chapter briefly reviews some of the wild gyrations that occurred in the Earth's climate hundreds of millions of years ago: snowball Earth and hothouse Earth. Coming closer to modern times, the effects of continental drift, particularly the closing of the Isthmus of Panama are believed to have contributed to the advent of ice ages in the past three million years. This first chapter sets the stage for a discussion of ices ages in the geological recent past (i.e. within the last three million years, with an emphasis on the last few hundred thousand years).

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.

1.1. MISSION BACKGROUND The scientific objective of this magnetospheric physics mission was a detailed in vestigation of the Aurora Borealis, or 'Northern Lights'. The fields experiments (electric and magnetic) were constructed by the University of California at Berke ley (UCB), and Los Angeles (UCLA) respectively. The particles instruments were constructed by UCB and the University of New Hampshire in collaboration with Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory. The instrument data processing unit was provided by UCB. The spacecraft bus, telemetry, and launch services were provided by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center SMEX office. The science principal investigator is Dr C. W. Carlson of UCB, and the program is managed by the SMEX office. The UCB design philosophy emphasizes the demonstration of design margins set by peer review. As a result, each boom system was extensively tested at a prototype level before the flight units were manufactured. Additionally, the design, assembly and testing of each boom mechanism was conducted by a single engineer solely responsible for its success.

This book describes the progress that has been made in the study of the process of ice rafting. It includes chapters on the concept of ice rafting and ice rafting and climate change. The main focus of the book is the reconstruction of past ice drift directions and their significance for an understanding of the global oceanic and atmospheric circulation.

First published in 1966 these collected papers, written by the distinguished and visionary climatologist Hubert H. Lamb, describe how climates come about and give a history of climatic changes from the last ice-age to the 1960s.

First published in 1988, this is a reissue of a groundbreaking collection of essays written by Hubert Lamb, one of the world's foremost experts on weather and climate and a uniquely authoritative voice in the history of climatology. Hubert Lamb is able to provide a mature assessment of the effect of weather on people, and vice versa. His is a uniquely authoritative voice in the current debates about today's environment and the prospects for the future.

After a general introduction the book is divided into three parts. The first part consists of a chronological series of portraits of climate and its impact on human affairs and the environment. These extend from the warm climates of the geological past to the current drought in Africa. There are several studies of the last few centuries and, in particular, of the various effects of the so-called ?little Ice Age?. The second part is concerned with the causes and mechanisms of climate and weather changes, including chapters discussing Christmas weather, fronts and volcanoes. In the final part Hubert Lamb looks to the future, and attempts to put into perspective some of the pessimistic forecasts currently available. The text, which is consistently authoritative but always readable, is augmented by numerous maps, diagrams and photographs.

First published in 1972, this first volume of Professor Lamb's study of our changing climate deals with the fundamentals of climate and climatology, as well as providing global data on the contemporary climates of the twentieth century.