Summary for policymakers Technical summary 1. The climate system - an overview 2. Observed climate variability and change 3. The carbon cycle and atmospheric CO2 4. Atmospheric chemistry and greenhouse gases 5. Aerosols, their direct and indirect effects 6. Radiative forcing of climate change 7. Physical climate processes and feedbacks 8. Model evaluation 9. Projections of future climate change 10. Regional climate simulation - evaluation and projections 11. Changes in sea level 12. Detection of climate change and attribution of causes 13. Climate scenario development 14. Advancing our understanding Glossary Index Appendix.

Climate change 2001: the scientific basis

Historically, management theory has ignored the constraints imposed by the biophysical (natural) environment. Building upon resource-based theory, this article attempts to fill this void by proposing a natural-resource-based view of the firm—a theory of competitive advantage based upon the firm's relationship to the natural environment. It is composed of three interconnected strategies: pollution prevention, product stewardship, and sustainable development. Propositions are advanced for each of these strategies regarding key resource requirements and their contributions to sustained competitive advantage.

/pdf/a-natural-resource-based-view-of-the-firm-19i7lyrwq8.pdf

A Natural-Resource-Based View of the Firm

Urban areas are hot spots that drive environmental change at multiple scales. Material demands of production and human consumption alter land use and cover, biodiversity, and hydrosystems locally to regionally, and urban waste discharge affects local to global biogeochemical cycles and climate. For urbanites, however, global environmental changes are swamped by dramatic changes in the local environment. Urban ecology integrates natural and social sciences to study these radically altered local environments and their regional and global effects. Cities themselves present both the problems and solutions to sustainability challenges of an increasingly urbanized world.

http://leml.asu.edu/jingle/web_pages/wu_pubs/pdf_files/grimm_etal-2008-gc+ecology of cities.pdf

Global Change and the Ecology of Cities

Numerical assessments of global air quality and potential changes in atmospheric chemical constituents require estimates of the surface fluxes of a variety of trace gas species. We have developed a global model to estimate emissions of volatile organic compounds from natural sources (NVOC). Methane is not considered here and has been reviewed in detail elsewhere. The model has a highly resolved spatial grid (0.5° × 0.5° latitude/longitude) and generates hourly average emission estimates. Chemical species are grouped into four categories: isoprene, monoterpenes, other reactive VOC (ORVOC), and other VOC (OVOC). NVOC emissions from oceans are estimated as a function of geophysical variables from a general circulation model and ocean color satellite data. Emissions from plant foliage are estimated from ecosystem specific biomass and emission factors and algorithms describing light and temperature dependence of NVOC emissions. Foliar density estimates are based on climatic variables and satellite data. Temporal variations in the model are driven by monthly estimates of biomass and temperature and hourly light estimates. The annual global VOC flux is estimated to be 1150 Tg C, composed of 44% isoprene, 11% monoterpenes, 22.5% other reactive VOC, and 22.5% other VOC. Large uncertainties exist for each of these estimates and particularly for compounds other than isoprene and monoterpenes. Tropical woodlands (rain forest, seasonal, drought-deciduous, and savanna) contribute about half of all global natural VOC emissions. Croplands, shrublands and other woodlands contribute 10–20% apiece. Isoprene emissions calculated for temperate regions are as much as a factor of 5 higher than previous estimates.

/pdf/a-global-model-of-natural-volatile-organic-compound-546vyk3ww5.pdf

A global model of natural volatile organic compound emissions

The major source of cloud-condensation nuclei (CCN) over the oceans appears to be dimethylsulphide, which is produced by planktonic algae in sea water and oxidizes in the atmosphere to form a sulphate aerosol Because the reflectance (albedo) of clouds (and thus the Earth's radiation budget) is sensitive to CCN density, biological regulation of the climate is possible through the effects of temperature and sunlight on phytoplankton population and dimethylsulphide production. To counteract the warming due to doubling of atmospheric CO2, an approximate doubling of CCN would be needed.

Oceanic phytoplankton, atmospheric sulphur, cloud albedo and climate

Industrial Ecology

The relative proportions of metal residing in ore in the lithosphere, in use in products providing services, and in waste deposits measure our progress from exclusive use of virgin ore toward full dependence on sustained use of recycled metal. In the U.S. at present, the copper contents of these three repositories are roughly equivalent, but metal in service continues to increase. Providing today's developed-country level of services for copper worldwide (as well as for zinc and, perhaps, platinum) would appear to require conversion of essentially all of the ore in the lithosphere to stock-in-use plus near-complete recycling of the metals from that point forward.

Metal stocks and sustainability

Metals are infinitely recyclable in principle, but in practice, recycling is often inefficient or essentially nonexistent because of limits imposed by social behavior, product design, recycling technologies, and the thermodynamics of separation. We review these topics, distinguishing among common, specialty, and precious metals. The most beneficial actions that could improve recycling rates are increased collection rates of discarded products, improved design for recycling, and the enhanced deployment of modern recycling methodology. As a global society, we are currently far away from a closed-loop material system. Much improvement is possible, but limitations of many kinds--not all of them technological--will preclude complete closure of the materials cycle.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/337/6095/690.full.pdf

Challenges in metal recycling.

Two sets of global inventories of anthropogenic emissions of both oxides of sulfur and oxides of nitrogen for circa 1985 have been produced under the umbrella of the Global Emissions Inventory Activity (GEIA) of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Program. The two sets of inventories have different temporal, sectoral, and vertical resolution. Both were compiled using the same data sets; default data sets of global emissions have been refined via the use of more detailed regional data sets. This article reports on the compilation of the annual, one-vertical-level inventories, called version 1A; the inventory files are available to the scientific community via anonymous file transform protocol (FTP). Existing global inventories and regional inventories have been updated and combined on a 1° × 1° longitude/latitude grid. The resulting global anthropogenic emissions are 65 Tg S yr−1 and 21 Tg N yr−1; qualitative uncertainty estimates have been assigned on a regional basis. Emissions of both SOx and NOx are strongly localized in the highly populated and industrialized areas of eastern North America and across Europe; other smaller regions of large emissions are associated with densely populated areas with developed industries or in connection with exploitation of fuels or mineral reserves. The molar ratio of nitrogen to sulfur emissions reflects the overall character of sources; its value is generally between 0.33 and 10 for industrialized and heavily populated areas but varies over a wide range for other areas. We suggest that those requiring sulfur or nitrogen emission inventories standardize on the GEIA inventories, which we believe are authoritative and which are freely available to all users by anonymous FTP.

Thomas E. Graedel

Papers

A global model of natural volatile organic compound emissions

Industrial Ecology

Metal stocks and sustainability

Challenges in metal recycling.

Global gridded inventories of anthropogenic emissions of sulfur and nitrogen