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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 9, NUMBER 12, DECEMBER 1996

BOOKS AND PROCEEDINGS...
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE

Item #d96dec51

The Role of Sun in Climate Change, D.V. Hoyt, K.H. Shatten, 304 pp., 1996, $29.95 hbk. (Oxford Univ.).

Emphasizes solar variation as a forcer or driver for climate change. Reviews the physics of the concept of solar forcing, from its beginnings in the early 1800s, to its near demise in the 1950s, to its recent resurgence. Three major sections cover: the sun (observations, variations in solar brightness); the climate (measurement and modeling, temperature, rainfall etc.); longer-term sun/climate connections.

Item #d96dec52

Natural Climate Variability on Decade-to-Century Time Scales, Climate Research Committee (D.G. Martinson, Chair), Natl. Res. Council, 640 pp., Sep. 1996, $59 (Natl. Acad. Press).

This volume is built around a workshop on the subject (Sep. 1992), sponsored by the Climate Research Committee, which was designed to obtain the broadest coverage possible. Its goal is to encourage greater interaction among the disciplines involved and between modelers and observationalists. Assesses progress in these areas and makes recommendations for research needed to enable prediction of climatic effects on humans, and evaluation of human effects on climate. Each chapter, introduced by an essay, contains several separately authored articles. The chapters cover an introduction, the atmosphere, the ocean, coupled systems, proxy indicators of climate, conclusions, and recommendations.

Item #d96dec53

Environmental Information Management and Analysis: Ecosystem to Global Scales, W.K. Michener, J.W. Brunt, S.G. Stafford, Eds., 555 pp., 1994, $99 (Taylor & Francis).

Reviewed by J. Haggerty in Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., (pp. 1596-1597, July 1996), who notes that this book is best suited for those already somewhat familiar with information management technology. This book is especially concerned with methods for handling data on a variety of spatial and temporal scales and with methods for incorporating that data into simulation models, for input and for validation. Although applications focus on specific disciplines, much general information should be useful to developers of information management systems in other fields.

Item #d96dec54

Arrhenius: From Ionic Theory to the Greenhouse Effect, E. Crawford, 320 pp., 1996, $49.95 (Watson).

Documents the major scientific achievements of Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), following his cross-disciplinary contributions in physics and chemistry, including his development of a model for the influence of atmospheric CO₂ on temperature.

Item #d96dec55

The Sea Surface and Global Change, P.S. Liss, R.A. Duce, Eds., 496 pp., 1996, $74.95 (Cambridge Univ.).

Presents the first comprehensive review in a decade of the sea-surface microlayer (the top 1 to 1000 micrometers of the ocean surface). Addresses the potential global marine impacts at the air-sea interface due to large-scale atmospheric ozone depletion and industrial pollution.

Item #d96dec56

The Oceans and Climate, G.R. Bigg, 256 pp., 1996, $69.95 hbk./$27.95 pbk. (Cambridge Univ.).

A comprehensive textbook that examines the complex interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere, describing how physical, biological and chemical processes combine in the oceans to affect climate change—past, present and future.

Item #d96dec57

The Chemistry of the Atmosphere: Oxidants and Oxidation in the Earth's Atmosphere. The 7th BOC Priestly Conference, A.R. Bandy, Ed., 228 pp., 1995, £55 (Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, U.K.).

Reviewed by M. Richardson in Intl. J. Environ. Studies (Vol. 50, pp. 287-288, 1996), who is frustrated that the book from a publisher of such high reputation was printed without an index and directly from the author's manuscripts "with an accompanying miscellany of font types and sizes." However, the scientific papers achieve their objectives of providing a general overview of recent research in these areas including trends in global tropospheric ozone levels and the mechanism of stratospheric ozone depletion.

Item #d96dec58

Proceedings of the International Conference on Climate Dynamics and the Global Change Perspective, B. Obreska-Starkel, T. Niedzwiedz, 546 pp., 1996 (Jagiellonian Univ.). No price given.

Includes all materials from this conference (Oct. 1995, Kracow, Poland). In addition to six invited keynote papers, others are in these categories: measurement methods and homogenization of the observational series; climate dynamics and its modeling; climate change detection; climate variability tendencies and impact; and historical climatology.

Item #d96dec59

The World Atlas of Snow and Ice Resources, V.M. Kotlyakov, Ed., expected late 1996 (Russian Acad. of Sci., Inst. Geog.). In English and Russian. The size of the press run will be determined by the number of prepublication orders.

Although 66% of the Earth's surface is covered with snow and ice in winter, until recently little was known about it. This publication, compiled by over 300 scientists over the last 20 years, is Russia's contribution to the International Hydrological Program of the IGBP and UNESCO. The atlas focuses on glaciers and glacial processes, snowmelt and runoff, and sea ice. It documents the status of the arctic environments during the 1970s and 1980s and should serve as a benchmark in assessing global warming and its consequences.

Item #d96dec60

Air Composition & Chemistry, P. Brimblecombe, 253 pp., 1995, $24.95 pbk. (Cambridge Univ.).

A revised edition that includes 53 citations published since 1986. Topics include atmospheric composition, temperature structure, gas-phase chemistry, aerosols, and pollution. An entire chapter is devoted to the upper atmosphere, focusing on stratospheric ozone. Another chapter deals in part with greenhouse gases. Reviewed in Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. (pp. 2114-2115, Sep. 1996) by D.W. Rusch, who concludes that the text contains a great deal of fairly well-organized material; however, no summaries are given to help synthesize the large amount of information in each chapter.