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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2, AUGUST 1988

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS...
REVIEWS

Item #d88aug16

"Late-Quaternary Dynamics of Temperate Forests: Applications of Paleoecology to Issues of Global Environmental Change," P.A. Delcourt (Dept. Geol. Sci., Univ. Tenn., Knoxville TN 37996), H.R. Delcourt, Quaternary Sci. Rev., 6(2), 129-146, June 1987.

Paleoecological evidence recently summarized from 162 fossil-pollen sites in eastern North America provides new insights concerning the nature and rate of response of temperate forest ecosystems to late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental changes. The review concentrates on the nature of individualistic migrations of tree taxa in response to climatic change, forest community dynamics, and evidence for impacts of prehistoric Native Americans on natural vegetation. This serves as a background for evaluating the possible effects of future changes on a global scale.

Item #d88aug17

"Climate Model Simulations of the Equilibrium Climatic Response to Increased Carbon Dioxide," M.E. Schlesinger (Dept. Atmos. Sci., Oregon State Univ., Corvallis OR 97331), J.F.B. Mitchell, Rev. Geophys., 25(4), 760-798, May 1987.

Early assessments of the potential climatic effects of increased CO₂ were performed using simplified energy balance and radiative-convective models. General circulation models (GCMs), which include the essential dynamics and thermodynamics of the feedback process, were developed to include the feedback mechanisms of climate change. Different results were obtained in recent CO₂-doubling experiments performed with three GCMs that include the annual insolation cycle. To improve the simulation of equilibrium climatic change induced by increased CO₂ concentrations, contemporary GCM simulations should be analyzed to determine the feedback processes responsible for their differences, and the parameterization of these processes in the GCMs should be validated against highly detailed models and observations.