New Tools for Assessing GHG Reduction Policies As negotiations towards a post-Kyoto agreement on Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions intensify, there is a pressing need for flexible, user-friendly analytical tools to quickly yet reliably assess the impacts of the rapidly evolving policy proposals for emissions of greenhouse gases and their impact on the global climate. Such tools would enable negotiators, policymakers and other stakeholders, including the general public, to understand the...

Managing Incoming Solar Radiation Largely out of concern that society may fall short of taking large and rapid enough measures to effectively contain the problem of global warming, two prominent atmospheric scientists - Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1995, and Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research - published papers in 2006, suggesting that society might consider using geoengineering schemes to identify a temporarily "fix" to the...

Impacts of Recent Climate Change: Current Responses and Future Projections for Wild Ecosystems Observed changes in natural systems, largely over the past century, indicate a clear global climate change signal. Even in the face of apparently dominating forces, such as direct, human-driven habitat destruction and alteration, this climate fingerprint implicates global climate change as a new and important driving force on wild plants and animals. Patterns across taxonomic groups are remarkably...

The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single largest human perturbation of the climate system. Its rate of change reflects the balance between human-driven carbon emissions and the dynamics of a number of terrestrial and ocean processes that remove or emit CO2. It is the long term evolution of this balance that will determine to a large extent the speed and magnitude of climate change and the mitigation requirements to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations at any given...

Gulf Coast Transportation: Coping with the Future Climate affects the design, construction, safety, operations, and maintenance of transportation infrastructure and systems. The prospect of a changing climate raises critical questions regarding how alterations in temperature, precipitation, storm events, and other aspects of the climate could affect the nation’s roads, airports, rail, transit systems, pipelines, ports, and waterways in the region of the U.S. central Gulf Coast between...

Herman Daly, Ph.D., delivers the keynote address the recent AMS workshop on Federal Climate Policy. He explores the distinction between economic growth —a quantitative increase in size that is constrained by the physical limits of the Earth system—and economic development—a qualitative improvement in our state of being. In so doing, he helps identify design principles for climate policy that can enhance environmental protection, benefit the economy, and promote political feasibility. Daly...

According to a February, 18, 2007, press release describing a survey on public perceptions of global warming, a majority of Americans agreed with most scientists that the Earth is getting warmer, but were divided over the seriousness of the problem, predicated on a belief that scientists themselves disagreed about global warming. What, if any, was the role of the news media in fueling that perception? Is that perception still prevalent? And where does the public stand today regarding...

Separating Solar and Anthropogenic (Greenhouse Gas-Related) Climate Impacts During the past three decades a suite of space-based instruments has monitored the Sun’s brightness as well as the Earth’s surface and atmospheric temperatures. These datasets enable the separation of climate’s responses to solar activity from other sources of climate variability (anthropogenic greenhouse gases, El Niño Southern Oscillation, volcanic aerosols). The empirical evidence indicates that the solar...

Contribution of Black Carbon and Atmospheric Brown Clouds to Climate Warming: Impacts and Opportunities Black carbon (BC) in soot is the dominant absorber of visible solar radiation in the atmosphere. Anthropogenic sources of black carbon, although distributed globally, are most concentrated in the tropics where solar irradiance is highest. Black carbon is often transported over long distances, mixing with other aerosols along the way. The aerosol mix can form transcontinental plumes of...

Joint Panel Discussion 8, The Science of Communications: What We Know We Didn't Know but Convinced Ourselves Otherwise (Joint between the Seventh Communications Workshop and the Third Symposium on Policy and Socio-Economic Research). Panelists: Chris Mooney, Seed Magazine, Washington, DC; Arthur Lupia, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI; Baruch Fischhoff, Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA; Molly Bentley, BBC World News. Moderator: Anthony Socci, AMS Policy Program, Washington, DC.

Biofuels: Threats and Opportunities It is possible to make biofuels that reduce carbon emissions, but only if we ensure that they do not lead to additional land clearing. When land is cleared for agriculture, carbon that is locked up in the plants and soil is released through burning and decomposition. The carbon is released as carbon dioxide, which is an important greenhouse gas, and causes further global warming. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food...

Adapting to Climate Change – Impacts on Our Transportation Infrastructure The U.S. transportation system was built for the typical weather and climate experienced locally. Moderate changes in the mean climate have little impact on transportation. However, changes in weather and climate extremes can have considerable impact on transportation. Transportation relevant measures of extremes have been changing over the past several decades and are projected to continue to change in the future....

The Mauna Loa CO2 Record: From the Era of Discovery to the Era of Consequences 2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the Mauna Loa and South Pole CO2 records, which are the longest continuous time series of atmospheric CO2 levels. These records have played a critical role in advancing research on global warming by establishing the reality of increasing CO2 and providing a quantitative basis to assess the impact of human activities on atmospheric CO2. From 1958 to 2008, the CO2 levels at Mauna...

Does the current framing and scaling of the climate/energy issue adequately capture the challenge posed? If not, what might be a more appropriate frame and scale? The Union of Energy and Climate The issues of global energy demand and climate response are, at one level, complex and contentious. However, they are linked by simple but compelling considerations. First, we know that energy demand is driven by the product of population, per capita yearly income, and the amount of energy...