Showing papers by "Stephen H. Schneider published in 1996"

Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather

Abstract: For most of history, humans have made every possible effort to accurately foretell the weather, evolving from the use of guesswork, rule of thumb, and signs in the sky to the development of contemporary forecasting techniques drawn from two scientific disciplines, climatology and meteorology. The Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather 2nd Edition provides a comprehensive history of the development of this practice, as well as provides a thoroughly up-to-date resource with many additions, revisions, and updates to this field of ever-increasing importance since the publication of the First Edition in 1996. In over 330 entries, the Encyclopedia covers essential topics that include the processes that produce weather, the circulation of the atmosphere that produces the world's climates, classification of climates, important scientific concepts used by climatologists and meteorologists, as well as the history atmospheric sciences, biographies of noteworthy contributors to the field, and significant weather events, from extreme tropical cyclones to tornadoes to hurricanes. New to this edition are articles on headline-grabbing topics that include the Kyoto Protocol, global warming, tradable permits, and extreme weather. Each entry is fully cross-referenced, to both definitions of weather- and climate-related terms as well as additional sources for further study. Over 300 photographs, maps, and charts offer highly evocative depictions of various weather and climate conditions around the world and across time. The Encyclopedia is also equipped with historical examples of disasters caused by bad weather, milestones in the development of the atmospheric sciences, and the geological time scale round out this survey, making it a comprehensive and authoritative resource for anyone doing research in this area or working in the field.

Geoengineering: could - or should - we do it?

Abstract: Schemes to modify large-scale environment systems or to control climate have been seriously proposed for over 50 years, some to (1) increase temperatures in high latitudes, (2) increase precipitation, (3) decrease sea ice, (4) create irrigation opportunities or to offset potential global warming by spreading dust in the stratosphere to reflect away an equivalent amount of solar energy. These and other proposed geoengineering schemes are briefly reviewed from a historical perspective. More recently, many such schemes to advertently modify climate have been proposed as cheaper methods to counteract inadvertent climatic modifications than conventional mitigation techniques such as carbon taxes or pollutant emissions regulations. Whereas proponents argue cost effectiveness, critics of geoengineering argue that there is too much uncertainty to either (1) be confident that any geoengineering scheme would work as planned, or (2) that the many decades of international political stability and cooperation needed for the continuous maintenance of such schemes to offset century long inadvertent efforts is problematic. Moreover, there is potential for transboundary conflicts should negative climatic events occur during geoengineering activities since, given all the large uncertainties, it could not be assured to victims of such events that the schemes were entirely unrelated to their damages. Nevertheless, although I believe it would be irresponsible to implement any large-scale geoengineering scheme until scientific, legal and management uncertainties are substantially narrowed, I do agree that, given the potential for large inadvertent climatic changes now being built into the earth system, more systematic study of the potential for geoengineering is probably needed.

Ecological implications of climate change will include surprises

Abstract: In addition to assessing the impacts of CO2 doubling on environment and society, more consideration is needed to estimate extreme events or ‘surprises’. This is particularly important at the intersection of disciplines like climate and ecology because the potential for large discontinuities is high given all the possible climate/biota interactions. The vast disparities in scales encountered by those working in traditional ecology (typically 20 m) and climatology (typically 200 km) make diagnoses of such interactions difficult, but these can be addressed by an emerging research paradigm we call strategic cyclical scaling (SCS). The need to anticipate outlier events and assign them subjective probabilities suggests emphasis on interdisciplinary research associations. The desire to reduce societal vulnerability to such events suggests the need to build adaptive management and diverse economic activities into social organizations. The effectiveness of adaptation responses to anticipated climatic changes is complicated when consideration of transient changes, regional disturbances, large unforseeable natural fluctuations and surprises are considered. Slowing down the rate of disturbances and decreasing vulnerability are advocated as the most prudent responses to the prospect of human-induced climatic changes.

Laboratory Earth: The Planetary Gamble We Can't Afford To Lose

Abstract: The possibility of global climatic change as a result of increasing numbers of people requiring higher standards of living has spawned an international controversy over the appropriateness of international controls on deforestation and energy use. In order to address the political debate, it is essential to understand the scientific background that underlies the problem. This book draws relevant material from the physical, biological and social sciences and integrates this information in the context of the environment-development debate. It takes the reader on a journey from the dawn of earth's climate and biological evolution through the era of the dinosaurs, past the Ice Age and into the shadowy environmental future increasingly dominated by human activities. In the final analysis, it will be human values more than scientific methods that must be applied to decide how to gamble with the fate of the earth.

The Future of Climate: Potential for Interaction and Surprises

Abstract: Surprises, by the very definition of the word, deal with unforeseen aspects of an issue. In the context of global warming, nearly all assessments recognise a wide range of uncertainty owing to a variety of processes that are not yet fully quantifiable, such as the feedback effects of clouds, soil organic matter changes, photosynthetic enhancement, changes in species composition or populations and alterations in the extent of snow and ice fields with climate changes. These feedback mechanisms could amplify or damp by up to several times projections made using preliminary calculations that neglect their proper interaction. Such assessments try to estimate these uncertainties and typically have suggested that if carbon dioxide (or its radiative equivalent in methane, chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxides etc.) were to double and be held fixed indefinitely (i.e. an ‘equilibrium’ experiment), then globally-averaged surface air temperatures would rise by about 1.5–4.5°C (Table 1) (National Academy of Sciences, 1978, 1987; Houghton et al., 1990, 1992). This canonical range reflects the best estimate of the subjective judgements (i.e. intuition) of broad cross-sections of knowledgeable scientists across a wide range of institutions over the uncertainties associated with these feedback processes. They are not surprises, strictly speaking, as variation within this range is anticipated, even though we cannot assign more than subjective or intuitive probability as to whether the actual climatic sensitivity to equilibrium C02 doubling would be nearer the higher or lower end of the range. Scientific intuition and some calculations have even suggested a modest chance (perhaps 10 per cent) for temperature warming above the upper 4.5°C limit or below the 1.5°C lower limit (Jager, 1987) — and this would constitute a ‘surprise’, as most of the knowledgeable scientific community consider it much more probable that the actual sensitivity will turn out within the canonical 1.5–4.5°C range