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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 7, NUMBER 2, FEBRUARY 1994

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS...

• GENERAL INTEREST--SCIENCE: CLIMATE CHANGE DETECTION

Item #d94feb19

"Detecting Climate Change Signals: Are There Any 'Fingerprints'?" S.H. Schneider (Dept. Biol. Sci., Stanford Univ., Stanford CA 94305), Science, 263(5145), 341-347, Jan. 21, 1994.

Some researchers have suggested that univariate indicators of possible climate change, such as globally averaged surface air temperature, should be replaced by multivariate methods called fingerprints, based on regionally heterogeneous projections of climate models. However, this extensive review argues that, until climate models are driven by time-evolving, multiple, heterogeneous forcing factors, the best climate change fingerprint will probably remain trends in large-scale surface air temperature over many decades.

Item #d94feb20

"The Variable Ocean," T.F. Stocker (Phys. Inst., Univ. Berne, Sidlerstr. 5, 3012 Berne, Switz.), Nature, 367(6460), 221-222, Jan. 20, 1994.

Comments on a recent paper by Delworth et al., which describes interactions between the ocean and atmosphere with a time scale of 40-60 years exhibited in a climate model simulation of present conditions. If the 40-60 year fluctuations generated in the model are also present in the real atmosphere, as some observations suggest, they would confound attempts to detect anthropogenic climate change. (See "Interdecadal Variations of the Thermohaline Circulation in a Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Model," T. Delworth (GFDL, POB 308, Princeton NJ 08542), S. Manabe, R.J. Stouffer, J. Clim., 6(11), 1993-2011, Nov. 1993.)