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February 28, 2007

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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 12, NUMBER 4, APRIL 1999

WEB-BASED INFORMATION

Item #d99apr39

Energy Outlook

In the April issue of its publication Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects electricity demand to grow by 1.4% in 1999 and by 2.1% in 2000. That growth is below the 2.4% annual growth observed between 1990 and 1998. It goes on to predict that oil import dependence will reach 54% in 2000. In making this prediction, the EIA assumes that domestic oil production will continue to decline because of foreign competition, that normal weather conditions will prevail, and that the economy will continue to grow at a modest rate. The full report can be found at http://www.eia.doe.gov/steo.

UNEP/GRID Databases

The United Nations Environment Programme/Global Resource Information Database (UNEP/GRID) North American node is located at the EROS Data Center of the U.S. Geological Survey in Sioux Falls, N.D., a Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) clearinghouse. During the past couple of years, GRID-Sioux Falls has been very active in the development and design of timely and scientifically credible products support international decision making. The clearinghouse provides access to data on population and population density, topography, climate, soils, and vegetation. For most databases, the user can see a graphic display of the data, read a report on the topic of the data, and view the associated metadata (sources and data-manipulation methods). The Clearinghouse is located at http://grid2.cr.usgs.gov/.

Land and Marine Temperature Records

The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) has made available the Global and Hemisphere Temperature Anomalies: Land and Marine Instrumental Records database on its website at http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/temp/jonescru/jones.html. The site includes tables and graphs of the data going from 1856 to 1998. It also includes a description of how to obtain the data, summaries of the graphic data, and references.

Avalanches

A large number of avalanches have occurred this year because of (1) high levels of precipitation and (2) rapid springtime warming and snowmelt. The Scout Report pulled together six websites that explain these climatological phenomena and how to deal with them:

• Avalanche [requires RealPlayer and QuickTime] at http://www.discovery.com/exp/avalanche/avalanche.html gives background information on avalanches; photographs, sounds, and movies of avalanches and avalanche rescues; and firsthand accounts of the causes and consequences of avalanches.
• In Avalanche Safety Basics at http://www.avalanche.org/~uafc/basics.html, the Westwide Avalanche Network presents the international code of avalanche safety basics based on danger ratings developed by the USDA Forest Service.
• Proceedings: Management and Analysis of Snow, Avalanche, and Climate Data at http://www.avalanche.org/~issw/96/contents.html compiles the presentations made at the International Snow Science Workshop on snow metamorphism, avalanche forecasting, driftometers, avalanche dynamics, and case studies.
• The Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center website at http://www.nwac.noaa.gov/ provides avalanche information for Washington, Oregon, and southern British Colombia.
• The Mountain Weather Data website at http://www.nwac.noaa.gov/nw05000.htm provides hourly climatological snowdepth information for the Pacific Northwest.
• And the Moonstone Snow and Avalanche Library at http://www.avalanche.org/~moonstone/ covers information on avalanches from the basics to advanced research.

Antarctic Bibliographic Database

A subset of the Scott Polar Research Institute bibliographic database SPRILIB has been brought up on the Web at http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/lib/spriant.htm. It contains 33,000 records from 1602 to 1996, providing comprehensive coverage of the Antarctic literature through 1962 and extensive coverage of the book and report literature after 1962. It is intended to complement the Cold Regions Bibliography, which covers journal articles and conference papers after 1962. The database can be searched by keyword, author, time period, geographic region, or expedition.

Biodiversity

The website Biodiversity: Measuring the Variety of Nature at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/science/projects/worldmap/ has been produced by the Natural History Museum in London to support the 1993 Convention on Biological Diversity. It has four main sections:

• Measuring biodiversity value,
• Measuring rarity and endemism,
• Assessing conservation priority and gap analysis, and
• Developments in biogeography.

Relevant approaches, methods, theories, and examples are discussed in each of these sections, and the site contains an annotated bibliography covering literature through to 1999. It also offers a free demo version of Worldmap, a software package for working with large biological data sets to explore geographic patterns in diversity, rarity, and conservation priorities.

INSTAAR

The Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado conducts interdisciplinary research on the biological, chemical, and physical interactions of the arctic, alpine, and other regions. Its website at http://instaar.colorado.edu/ discusses research on ecosystems, geophysics, past global change, and geochronology. It also contains a bibliography of 1300 references on the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research site covering from 1900 to the present.

La Niña

NOAA has brought up a website on La Niña, the cold counterpart of El Niño in the cycle known as the Southern Oscillation. The website’s URL is http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/lanina.html. It answers frequently asked questions about La Niña, shows animations of changing ocean-temperature conditions, provides monthly U.S. temperature and precipitation maps, predicts future climate patterns, and describes the impacts of La Niña.

HEED

The joint NOAA–NASA Health, Ecological, and Economic Dimensions of Global Change Program tracks major marine ecological disturbances and disease outbreaks to better understand the causes and consequences of environmental change and to assess the health- and market-related costs of global change. It has instituted a website at http://heed.unh.edu/index.html that contains:

• The narrative report Marine Ecosystems: Emerging Diseases as Indicators of Change,
• GIS maps, and
• Six data sets and a modeling framework with which to explore the effects of climate, pollution, and trophodynamic shifts on marine ecosystems and their attendant diseases.

MATTER

MATTER is an acronym for the computer model MATerials Technologies for greenhouse-gas Emissions Reduction. The complete model’s technology database is available via Internet. It covers all GHG emissions in Western Europe. The complete energy and materials system is characterized in detail “from cradle to grave” for 1990 to 2050 at http://www.ecn.nl/unit_bs/etsap/markal/matter. The model’s input pages can be accessed at http://www.ecn.nl/unit_bs/etsap/markal/matter/data/main.html, which also contains links to background information. The site can be used to analyze the relationships between the input and the output, which is also online. Reports on final model runs are planned for summer and autumn of this year.