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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 4, NUMBER 8, AUGUST 1991

REPORTS...
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE

Item #d91aug46

Available at no charge from Coord. Office, Nat. Atmos. Deposition Prog./Nat. Trends Network (NADP/NTN), Natural Resour. Ecol. Lab., Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins CO 80523 (303-491-1978).

Justification and Criteria for the Monitoring of Ultraviolet (UV) Radiation, J. Gibson, 21 pp., Apr. 1991. Report of a workshop held January 1991 in Denver with support from the federal government and the CFC industry. It recommends about six sites be established in the U.S. to provide high quality spectral irradiance monitoring, as a basis for understanding the responses of ecosystems to current conditions, forecasting future effects, and developing response strategies for mitigating effects resulting from any future UV increases.

The Future Role of the NADP/NTN in Environmental Research, C.L. Simmons, J.H. Gibson et al. (NADP/NTN Ad Hoc Committee on New Initiatives), 10 pp., May 1991. In addition to further monitoring of acidic deposition, new initiatives are planned. These include understanding the contribution of urban sources to regional and global pollutant levels; determining trends in concentrations and fluxes of toxic gases, such as ozone, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen peroxide and nitrogen oxides, and of climate-modifying gases such as methane, nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide; and determining trends in UV-B radiation.

Item #d91aug47

Request the following through Carbon Dioxide Info. Analysis Ctr., U.S. Dept. Energy, Oak Ridge Nat. Lab., Oak Ridge TN 37831 (615-574-0390).

A Comprehensive Precipitation Data Set for Global Land Areas (DOE/ER-6901T-H1; TR051), J.K. Eischeid (Univ. Colorado, Boulder), H.F. Diaz et al., 82 pp., Apr. 1991. Describes an expanded and updated compilation of long-term station precipitation data and a new set of gridded monthly mean fields for global land areas. The latter were compared with two other global-scale precipitation climatologies, with good agreement over the common areas. All three indicate a general increase of annual precipitation since the 1940s, with a decrease over the last decade. March-May and September-November have become wetter in the last few decades.

Global Climate Feedbacks: Proceedings of the Brookhaven National Laboratory Workshop, June 3-6, 1990 (CONF-9006134), B. Manowitz, Ed. (Brookhaven Nat. Lab., Upton, N.Y.), 179 pp., Dec. 1990. The workshop identified feedbacks that actually or potentially govern the system's response to perturbations, gaps in knowledge that preclude accurate representation in models, and needed research. Specific recommendations are made by panels on atmospheric feedbacks, on ocean interactions and sea-ice response, and on terrestrial ecosystems.

Modeling pCO₂ in the Upper Ocean: A Review of Relevant Physical, Chemical and Biological Processes (DOE/RL-01830T-H5; TR050), D. Archer (Sch. Oceanog., Univ. Washington, Seattle), 63 pp., Dec. 1990. Explores distinctions among three types of models (integrated turbulent energy, shear instability, turbulence closure), and summarizes previously published comparisons of their generality, accuracy, and computational requirements. Also reviews the application of mixed layer models to sea ice.

Carbon Dioxide and Climate: Summaries of Research in FY 1990 (DOE/ER-0470T), 139 pp., Oct. 1990. Provides general program goals and organization as well as roughly one-page summaries of individual projects funded inside and outside of the Department of Energy.

Item #d91aug48

Available from U.S. General Accounting Office (POB 6015, Gaithersburg MD 20877; 202-275-6241). First five copies free; additional $2 ea.

Space Operations: NASA is Not Archiving All Potentially Valuable Data (GAO/IMTEC-91-3), 51 pp., Nov. 1990. NASA does not archive all original mission data that could be useful, because its 1978 policy does not require certain research data to be archived, and because some missions did not adequately plan for data management. Participation of outside scientists is important because of their different perspectives on the value of data, but many of those have found their recommendations ignored because they were not involved in the actual development and operation of mission data processing systems.

Environmental Data: Major Effort is Needed to Improve NOAA's Data Management and Archiving (GAO/IMTEC-91-11), 63 pp., Nov. 1990. Half of NOAA's more than 440,000 magnetic tapes and most of its extensive film and paper records are stored under poor conditions, and some data have already been lost. NOAA has not performed an agency-wide inventory of its data holdings or promulgated agency standards for storage, maintenance, quality control and inventory. These problems will get worse as the volume of data to be handled increases.

Item #d91aug49

Guide to Reference and Standard Atmosphere Models, R. Whitten, W. Vaughan, July 1990; $79.95 ($59.95 for AIAA members). AIAA/TASCO, POB 753, Waldorf MD 20605 (301-645-5643, Dept. 415).

Subjected to the vigorous worldwide review procedures of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, this describes standard models of the physical and chemical composition of the atmosphere from the surface to 2500 km, including development of rationale, uncertainties, and computer code availability.

Item #d91aug50

Radiation and Climate: The Intercomparison of Radiation Codes (WMO/TD No. 371), R.G. Ellingson, Y. Fouquart, 1990. Available from World Meteor. Org., POB 5, CH-1211 Geneva 20, Switz. ; or through Amer. Meteor. Soc., 45 Beacon St., Boston MA 02108 (617-227-2425). Report of a workshop held August 1988 in Paris.