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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 3, NUMBER 3, MARCH 1990

NEWS...
RESEARCH NEWS

Item #d90mar64

"Greenhouse Makes Greenland Grow," New Scientist, p. 36, Feb. 3, 1990. Satellite observations indicate the Greenland ice sheet has thickened by almost a quarter meter since the late 1970s, possibly a consequence of global warming. (See Zwally article, Global Climate Change Digest, PROF. PUBS./EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE, Feb. 1990.)

Item #d90mar65

"Warming May Disrupt Nutrient-Rich Ocean Currents," ibid. The upwelling of nutrients important to marine ecosystems could be altered by global warming. (See Bakun article, Global Climate Change Digest, PROF. PUBS./EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE, Feb. 1989.)

Item #d90mar66

"Cool Times Ahead for the Upper Atmosphere," Sci. News, p. 23, Jan. 13, 1990. Computer modeling of the upper atmosphere predicts that cooling will occur as greenhouse gases accumulate; satellites may stay in orbit longer, but other possible effects of this are unknown. (See Roble, PROF. PUBS./GLOBAL MODELING, this Global Climate Change Digest issue--Mar. 1990.)

Item #d90mar67

"South Stays Cooler in Greenhouse Models," Sci. News, p. 413, Dec. 23/30, 1989. Results from a coupled atmosphere-ocean model show that mixing of surface and deep water will slow greenhouse warming in the Southern Hemisphere. (See Stouffer, PROF. PUBS./GLOBAL MODELING, this Global Climate Change Digest issue--Mar. 1990.)

Item #d90mar68

"Deep Trouble for Climate Change," N.J. Shackelton, Nature, p. 616, Dec. 7, 1989. New data derived from the ages of fossil corals show that we still do not understand the very rapid climate change during the Younger Dryas period at the end of the last glaciation. (See Fairbanks, PROF. PUBS./SEA LEVEL, this Global Climate Change Digest issue--Mar. 1990.)

Item #d90mar69

"Floodwaters Mark Sudden Rise," M.J. Tooley, Nature, pp. 20-21, Nov. 2, 1989. Geological evidence indicates that sudden, catastrophic floods from glacial meltwater could have raised sea level by over 20 cm in as little as a few weeks. (See Shaw article, PROF. PUBS./SEA LEVEL, this Global Climate Change Digest issue--Mar. 1990.)

Item #d90mar70

"Reduced Rise in Sea Level," M.F. Meier, Nature, pp. 115-116, Jan. 11, 1990. The consensus at a recent American Geophysical Union symposium on sea level rise was that recent estimates of a one-meter rise from greenhouse warming may be too high. The group's best estimate is one-third meter, but the uncertainties involved allow a range of zero to two-thirds meter. (The symposium results are also covered in Sci. News, p. 397, Dec. 16, and Science, p. 1563, Dec. 22.)

Item #d90mar71

"Oceanographers Make a Noise to Test the Water," I. Anderson, New Scientist, p. 34, Feb. 10, 1990. Scientists from the United States and Australia have devised an elaborate experiment using sound waves to measure the temperatures of the world's oceans simultaneously. They intend to determine whether the greenhouse effect has caused a rise in ocean temperatures.

Item #d90mar72

"Oceans Said to Absorb about 30 Percent, not 50 Percent, of Human-Generated CO₂," World Clim. Change Rep., p. 13, Dec. 1989. This is the result of measurements taken in the North Sea over a 15-month period ending October 1989, announced by Britain's National Environmental Research Council (NERC). See also Chem. in Britain, p. 734, Nov. 20; Nature, p. 106, Nov. 9.

Item #d90mar73

"Effects of Increased Ultraviolet," T.E. Graedel, Nature, pp. 621-622, Dec. 7, 1989. An account of presentations at a recent workshop on the topic (Wood's Hole, Oct. 1989) involving atmospheric chemists and physicists, marine and freshwater chemists, biochemists and biologists.

Item #d90mar74

"Radio Waves Might Safeguard the Ozone Layer," S. Law, New Scientist, p. 31, Sep. 16, 1989. A physicist at UCLA will soon begin testing a scheme to produce chlorine ions from chlorine atoms in the stratosphere using radio waves. Unlike their neutral counterparts, chlorine ions do not destroy ozone.

Item #d90mar75

A Global Ocean Surface Temperature Atlas, assembled by R. Newell and his colleagues at MIT and the British Meteorological Office, indicates little or no global warming over the past century. The atlas has passed peer review but so far there is no sponsor for the $60,000 subsidy required for publication by the MIT Press. (See Technol. Rev., p. 80, Nov./Dec. 1989.)

Item #d90mar76

"U.S. WOCE Program Ready to Begin," D. Mayes, Eos, pp. 874, 884-885, Oct. 3, 1989. Explains the U.S. contribution to the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, a 40-nation study of the global ocean that begins this year. The goal is to understand the role of ocean circulation in climate change over periods of decades and longer.

Item #d90mar77

Meeting Reports

Inversion of Ocean Circulation Models (July 1989 workshop of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, London), Eos, pp. 2, 3, 5, Jan. 2, 1990.

21st International Liege Colloquium on Ocean Dynamics (May 1989, Liege, Belgium), ibid., pp. 5, 14. The focus was the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

Climate and Water (Sep. 1989, World Meteor. Org., Helsinki, Finland), ibid., p. 1560, Dec. 19, 1989.

Exchange of Trace Gases between Atmosphere and Biosphere (57th Dahlem Workshop, FRG), JAPCA, pp. 1106-1108, Aug. 1989. The focus was methane and nitrous oxides.