3 Responses to “Climate Change and Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming”

1. Spencer Says: April 25th, 2008 at 10:34 am

   Each person familiar with the history would make up a somewhat different list of papers, depending on all sorts of personal criteria; some would pick the most important papers, some the most readable, some the most typical. Without wanting to displace any of the items Dr. Fleming selected, here are a few others worth knowing about.

   Roger Revelle and Hans E. Suess, “Carbon Dioxide Exchange between Atmosphere and Ocean and the Question of an Increase of Atmospheric CO2 During the Past Decades.” Tellus 9 (1957): 18-27.

   One of the most famous of all “global warming” papers, but almost unreadable. At the frontier of the unknown things can get messy. It would be an interesting exercise for the student to find the sentences that Revelle added just before sending the paper off to press, contradicting the rest of the text. These contain the discovery of the “Revelle Effect,” which explained, contrary to what most believed, that the oceans cannot absorb CO2 as rapidly as we are producing it. Bolin and Erikson in their 1959 paper were the first explain the effect clearly and maybe even the first to really understand it, and they pushed on to correct conclusions. But Revelle gets credit for discovering the effect. He also gets some points for noticing, what was novel at the time, that we might face an exponential rise of emissions, leading to his much-quoted statement that “Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future.”

   Charles D. Keeling, “The Concentration and Isotopic Abundances of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere.” Tellus 12 (1960): 200-203.

   Not a broad paper like Keeling’s 1970 one, but a typical scientific report of a small project which happened to be a momentous historical landmark: the data that made scientists take greenhouse-effect warming seriously. Wexler and Revelle had hired Keeling to take a snapshot of CO2 levels during the International Geophysical Year, expecting somebody would come back in 20 years or so to see if the levels had risen. Keeling persuaded Wexler to buy him highly accurate devices, and in only two years demonstrated that the level was rising–and at the rate predicted by Revelle’s 1957 calculation that the oceans would take up only about half of annual emissions.

   Reid A. Bryson, and Wayne M. Wendland, “Climatic Effects of Atmospheric Pollution.” In Global Effects of Environmental Pollution, edited by S. F. Singer (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1970), pp. 130-38.

   A fascinating example of a type of paper not uncommon in this story: important because it was very right and also important because it was very wrong. Bryson pointed out the rapid and world-wide rise of aerosol pollution, and emphasized the possibility that it would have a strong cooling effect. His suggestion that this might soon precipitate a new ice age helped inspire a blast of public attention, and even attracted attention from policy-makers during the global agricultural crisis that struck in the early 1970s. Scientists (including Bryson himself) knew that it was only speculation, but they began to pay attention to aerosols. It took until the 1980s to get good evidence that pollution does produce cooling, although only enough to retard global warming by a decade or two.

   Sean A. Twomey, “The Effect of Cloud Scattering on the Absorption of Solar Radiation by Atmospheric Dust.” J. Atmospheric Sciences 29 (1977): 1156-59; idem, “The Influence of Pollution on the Shortwave Albedo of Clouds.” J. Atmospheric Sciences 34 (1977): 1149-52.

   Only an expert could read these articles all the way through, but skimming them for key sentences can give the main ideas. Addressing the exquisitely difficult questions of how clouds reflect sunlight and how aerosol pollution changes the clouds–issues crucial to any climate model–Twomey showed that things are even more complicated than experts had imagined. Adding particles would normally create more water droplets, and thus thicker light-reflecting clouds. But when you make the drops still bigger, they fall out as rain and the clouds are gone. Twomey also estimated how the amount of reflection and absorption of sunlight depend on the average size of the droplets… and so forth. This is getting so technical it’s wonkish, but that’s science for you, and this is the real stuff, a major advance in understanding. To this day people are still trying to sort it all out; clouds remain the most uncertain part of computer climate models.

   Hans Oeschger, J. Beer, U. Siegenthaler, B. Stauffer, W. Dansgaard and C. C. Langway, Jr. “Late Glacial Climate History from Ice Cores.” In Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity. (Geophysical Monograph 29, Maurice Ewing Vol. 5), edited by James E. Hansen and Taro Takahashi (Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union, 1984), pp. 299-306.

   Which of the many icecap-drilling papers to include? Regretfully setting aside the heroic Franco-Russian work in Antarctica,* I’ll choose this example, which has the chief Greenland ice-drilling leaders in its author list. Dansgaard, Langway, Oeschger and their teammates found century-scale shifts of CO2 in ancient ice, closely correlated with temperature changes. This not only gave striking confirmation of a serious CO2-climate connection, but also disturbed scientists with its evidence that a tremendous regional climate change could take place within the span of a human lifetime. (Later, even more abrupt and scary jumps were demonstrated. In fact they can be seen in the early data but were dismissed as “noise”.)
   * Well, I can’t resist citing one example of the Vostok results: Claude Lorius, J. Jouzel, C. Ritz, L. Merlivat, N. I. Barkov, Y. S. Korotkevich and V. M. Kotlyakov, “A 150,000-Year Climatic Record from Antarctic Ice.” Nature 316 (1985): 591-96. This impressed everyone by demonstrating a temperature-CO2 correlation through an entire glacial cycle

   V. Ramanathan, R.J. Cicerone, H.B. Singh and J.T. Kiehl, “Trace Gas Trends and Their Potential Role in Climate Change.” J. Geophysical Research 90 (1985): 5547-66.

   Ram’s most influential paper. Scientists were thunderstruck by his groups’s conclusion that methane, CFCs, NO2, etc.–altogether thirty trace gases that absorb infrared radiation–added together could bring as much global warming as CO2 itself. That meant global warming would come on twice as fast as expected, probably within the scientists’ own lifetimes. This paper was a main force behind the unprecedented statement issued by a group of experts at a conference at Villach, Austria in 1985, warning of serious consequences and calling on governments to consider international agreements to restrict emissions.

   James E. Hansen, Andrew Lacis, Reto A. Ruedy and Makiko Sato, “Potential Climate Impact of Mount Pinatubo Eruption.” Geophysical Research Letters 19 (1992): 142-58.

   What, another Hansen paper? This is a favorite of mine, and it had considerable impact, because it actually made a prediction. His group calculated how the atmosphere’s structure of temperature etc. should change over the next couple of years as a result of the massive injection of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere from a giant 1991 volcanic eruption. The computer projection turned out roughly correct. This not only gave computer models a sort of official stamp of approval (“real scientists can predict things”), but nailed down for good the cooling effect of sulfates.

   “Summary for Policymakers: The Science of Climate Change - IPCC Working
   Group I,” from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change, edited by J. T. Houghton et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), and online at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/climate-changes-1995/spm-science-of-climate-changes.pdf

   A 5-page summary of the state of knowledge as of 1995, far better than many imagined would emerge from the discussions. Despite the requirement that all the hundreds of scientists and government officials had to agree on the statements, they announced that “The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” Oil-producing nations tried to hide the conclusions amid weasel words and jargon but it was now clear that scientists agreed there was at least a risk of severe global warming. The report caught little public attention, however, since there were no surprises for people who had been following the issue and everything was shaded by uncertainties. Nevertheless this marks the first baby step for an unprecedented role for a scientific panel in the world’s economic, political and diplomatic history.

   –Spencer Weart
   American Institute of Physics

2. Briana Timmerman Says: August 25th, 2008 at 10:26 am

   I was seriously considering using this for my Honors College Environmental Biology class because it is a non-majors class and so the historian’s perspective and interpretive essays make this a really attractive resource. I am a bit frustrated however as to why the literature review stops at 1995. The last 10 years have been the watershed moment for this issues in terms of acceptance within the general public (and then later, the presidential administration) and it just seems like a novel that stops a chapter before the plot actually climaxes. Is there a possibility that 1995 to 2008 will be added soon?

3. Michael Luby Says: September 10th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

   Dear Dr. Timmerman,

   Thank you very much indeed for your comment and I do hope you make use of the CAC issue on global warming in your class. In reference to your dismay over not finding any more recent material, after 1995, in the collection, this is in part due to

   1) My asking Dr. Fleming to concentrate most specifically on a group of “landmark” works, spanning a large timeframe, that would illustrate how systematic scientific research on greenhouse gases, climate, human activity, and their interaction is considerably older than might generally be believed–given how topical an issue it is today. Moreover, I asked that we present earlier, perhaps less “specialized,” experimental studies communicated through the formal system of peer-reviewed publications that informed the advance of understanding throughout the history of the research problem, which had set the stage for contemporary work. I further suggested to Dr. Fleming that current work, even that which is excellent, should be not be included in deference to articles that are “classics.” Of course, neither how old a paper need be to be considered classic, nor, for that matter, which of the many-more-than-twenty outstanding archival papers should be considered here as classics, are exact propositions (see Dr. Spencer Weart’s observations/suggestions in this forum from April on studies not included here).

   So we decided not to use anything less than approximately 10 years old.

   2) We are in the process of developing a companion project to Classic Articles in Content, called Timely Teaching, that will present contemporary and/or “hot” areas in scientific research using current research articles, coupled, as in CAC, with narrative essays.

   3) The variety of permissions we requested of publishers for legacy papers in conceiving this project, we felt, would likely differ from what we would request of content holders in the case of current articles. And rather than complicate the process in preparing the debut Classic Articles issue, we felt it best to focus on older articles.

   We would very much welcome readers of NSDL Imprint to suggest examples of groundbreaking work in atmospheric science, climate dynamics, etc., related to global warming, published after 1995 that they consider particularly important and why. If readers would also care to indicate what makes the studies they suggest particularly important and/or any connections between the current studies and the older works identified, that would be especially welcome.

   In the meantime I compiled a short list of works after 1995 that should open to view without a subscription. I post these for your information and for any commentary by climate experts. Note I am not a climate scientist so I did not include any interpretive remarks. For articles from the journal “Science” you will need to register for an ID/PW [free] see http://www.sciencemag.org/subscriptions/indiv_register.dtl.

   ENSO-like interdecadal variability: 1900-93
   Author(s): Zhang Y, Wallace JM, Battisti DS
   JOURNAL OF CLIMATE Volume: 10 Issue: 5 Pages: 1004-1020 MAY 1997

   Climate change threats to plant diversity in Europe
   Author(s): Thuiller W, Lavorel S, Araujo MB, et al.
   PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
   Volume: 102 Issue: 23 Pages: 8245-8250 JUN 7 2005

   Science 16 September 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5742, pp. 1844 - 1846
DOI: 10.1126/science.1116448
   Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment
   P. J. Webster, G. J. Holland, J. A. Curry, H.-R. Chang

   Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario
   Author(s): Hansen J, Sato M, Ruedy R, et al.
   PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
   Volume: 97 Issue: 18 Pages: 9875-9880 AUG 29 2000

   Science 5 March 2004:
   Vol. 303. no. 5663, pp. 1499 - 1503
   DOI: 10.1126/science.1093877
   European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends, and Extremes Since 1500
   Jürg Luterbacher, Daniel Dietrich, Elena Xoplaki, Martin Grosjean, Heinz Wanner

   Impact of CO2-induced warming on simulated hurricane intensity and precipitation: Sensitivity to the choice of climate model and convective parameterization
   Author(s): Knutson TR, Tuleya RE
   JOURNAL OF CLIMATE Volume: 17 Issue: 18 Pages: 3477-3495 SEP 2004

   Climate-carbon cycle feedback analysis: Results from the (CMIP)-M-4 model intercomparison
   Author(s): Friedlingstein P, Cox P, Betts R, et al.
   JOURNAL OF CLIMATE Volume: 19 Issue: 14 Pages: 3337-3353 JUL 2006

   I hope you find this helpful.

   Best,

   Michael Luby
   Executive Editor, NSDL Classic Articles in Context

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