Global Climate: Current Research and Uncertainties in the Climate System PDF
Preview Global Climate: Current Research and Uncertainties in the Climate System
x. Rod ö F. A. Comfn Global Climate Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH Xavier Rode Francisco A. Comin (Eds.) Global Climate Current Research and Uncertainties in the Climate System With 86 Figures i Springer DR. XAVIER RODO University ofBarcelona Climate ResearchGroup Baldiri Reixac, 4-6, Torre D 08032 Barcelona Spain e-mail : Foreword Uncertainty for Everyone The one thing that is certain about the world is that the world is uncertain. I have here, the question that apart of the matter, living matter, has to resolve in each and every one of its moments of existance. The environment of a living being is apart of the living being where it turns out, the rest of the living beings live. This is the drama of life on earth. Every living individual debates with his environment, exchanging matter, energy and information in the hope of staying alive, the same as all living beings who share that same environment. The adven- ture of a living being (of all living beings ) is to maintain reasonable independ- ence in face ofthe fluctuations ofuncertainty within the environment. The range of restrictions and mutual relationships is colossal. How is the tran- seendental pretension of staying alive regulated? There is an equation imposed by the laws of thermodynamics and the mathematical theory of information about the interaction of a living being with his environment which we could state like this: The complexity 01 a living individual plus his capacity for anticipation in re- sp ect to his en vironment is identical to the uncertainty of the environment plus the capacity of that living being to change the environment. We could reconsider the question: what alternatives has a living being to con- tinue living when the uncertainty of his environment grows? Let's speak about uncertainty first. There are many kinds ofuncertainty. For example, even though it might sound strange, there is an uncertainty which we could say is predictable, that is, it acts with a certain amount of frequency, enough that natural selection acts over a long period of time "inventing" for example, the intelligence of a bac- teria or a squid. However, there are more uncertain uncertainties that require the capacity of anticipation greater than that of an octopus, a dog or a primate....or that which begins with abstract knowledge and continues with science! Thus, with an increasing capacity to know the world, apart of the biosphere, the human bio- sphere has also managed to touch the other term of the equation, that of the capac- ity to change the world. Let us call this technology. The spiral causes dizziness: the pressure of uncertainty pushes an individual to know what technology acquires in order to change the world. But two things hap- VI Foreword pen. The changes affect the uncertainty of the particular environment of each indi- vidual, and all individuals do the same! Something very special occurs with cli- mate in the second part of the equation. While the complexity, anticipation and action vary a lot from one individual to the other (whether that individual be an organism, family, flock, society, or na- tion) with each day more, the increase of climatic uncertainty is the same for all. There is only one way out. If science and technology affect global uncertainty, only more science and more technology will allow us, perhaps, to control it. J. Wagensberg Barcelona Science Museum Preface Climate research has undergone dramatic changes in the last decades and a major- ity of the knowledge being produced tends to be lost among the vast amount of journals and dissemination papers or, at most has a short virtual life from time to time on the internet. It was in an attempt to summari ze the state of the art in the climate sciences that a conference was first held in Barcelona in 1999 from which this book eventually saw light. The meet ing was held with the aim of enriching the scientifi c debate on the climate sciences in our geographical area . The conference had in its initials , my own personal experience in several climate labs abroad and, a willingness to bring what was enlightening from that experience. The support and encouragement 1 received from some of the reputed colleagues who later at- tended the meeting and eventually contributed to this book was particularly impor- tant. This book was first devised as a recopilatory of the talks given in that sympo- sium, but I sincerely think that the final product is even considerably better than what was originally thought of at first. In fact this improvement is clear as, to the original seven chapters, four new ones were added at several different stages of development. The focus that each ofthe authors was asked to give to their chapter, intended to highlight those areas where there were gaps in c1imate knowledge and where research was currently pushing strongly. In other thematic areas of interest, unfortunatel y, the limited extent of the book fails to cover equally important topics that perhaps should have had a place in a book like th is. However, from the very bcginning, it was not the main purpose of the book to cover all the key issues that climate research currently faces. Opinions from experts in the different areas give a detailed view of what are, at present, the main 'hotspots' in the functioning of the climate system of our planet. The book is intended to give the reader abrief overview of the current status of c1imate re- search, trying to take him/her from the basics of climate science in every field to where research is currently being made in that particul ar area. The next years will, for sure, see rapid advances in many of these issues and quite probably, many of the questions raised here will eventually see a response . In our planet both c1imate and biosphere evolved together, influenc ing each other for millennia. The physical limits that make possible the existence of an ex- traordin ary variety of ecosystems and of life itself as we know it, arise from the ongo ing interaction among phenomena as familiar as winds, clouds, light, air, land and water throughout the Earth's history. This same interaction produces large- scale phenomena that, like EI Nifio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), exchange huge amount s of energy. It is also the way by which small changes in solar radiation are internalized and translated into dramat ic climatic episodes such as the Ice Ages . VIII Preface This interaction also largely detennines the fate and the response to the increasing quantities of greenhouse gases that we are continuously throwing to the atmos- phere as the result of our unlimited economic and industrial activity. Our climate system has a great inertia and this fact implies that, in the near fu- ture, we will have to live with the consequences of our acts in the past and in the present in the form of unprecedented climate changes. And, as we cannot escape such changes, we will have to learn how to adapt to them. But to do so, we need to increase our knowledge on how the climate system works, how it worked in the past and on the basis of this, forecast how it may evolve in the future. In essence, we must begin to admit that our changing earth is now facing us with a new pic- ture in which we are a fundamental part ofthe climate system. The book has a set of introductory chapters: F.A. Comin and M.A. Rodriguez- Arias, in Chap. I, give an overview of the current status and future prospects of climate research while S.G.H. Philander explains in Chap. 2, the basics of global wanning and discusses why this subject is a controversial issue, beyond scientific results. In Chap. 3, the same author talks about the historical relations between EI Nifio and the Southern Oscillation, and the current status and prospects for its pre- dictability. C.F. Ropelewki and B. Lyon talk in Chap. 4 about what should be an ideal Climate Information System for monitoring climate change and discuss the available forecasting and dissemination products in an overview of what are the main societal aspects of climate change. Later, S. M. Griffies in Chap. 5, analyzes what the main key areas of research and improvement in current ocean modeling are and describes what will possibly be the next generation of ocean models. In a second chapter (Chap. 6), S.M. Griffies discusses, on the basis of recent results, the role of ocean memory on climate predictability. P. Ciais analyzes the new and past global carbon cycles in Chap. 7, and discusses the sources, fluxes and sinks of carbon in the different compartments of the climate system. He also makes some remarks on the impacts of future climate seenarios on the global carbon cy- cle. T. Stocker relates changes in the global carbon cycle with the ocean circula- tion in Chap. 8 and discusses the possibility of abrupt climate changes taking place in certain future scenarios. In Chap. 9, K. Alverson and C. Kull talk about past climates and the detection of anthropogenic effects in historical records, re- viewing the infonnation given by paleoproxies of climate data. This infonnation can be used to depict a baseline climate upon which to predict future climate changes. The authors eventually attempt to assess what the significance of the past is for the future. Krishnamurty and Kinter, in Chap. 10, describe what is currently known and what is not, of the Indian Monsoon System and relate the monsoonal activity with global climate variability. They further analyze the role of large-scale phenomena like ENSO and NAO in monsoon dynamics. Finally, X. Rodö in Chap. 11 discusses the relations between the Tropics and the Extratropics, and analyzes how new approaches to data analysis and modeling could also be used to increase predictability at midlatitudes. Acknowledgements. The book we present here is the result of aseries of lectures given within the scope of 'Global Climate' , held at the Barcelona Science Mu- seum, under the auspices of 'La Caixa' Foundation in March 1999. The confer- Preface IX ence was co-sponsored by the Departament d'Universitats i Recerca ofthe Gener- alitat de Catalunya and the University of Barcelona. Among the main people to thank, I wish to express my most sincere apprecia- tion to Miquel Angel Rodriguez-Arias whose expertise, diligence and patience have underpinned the successful edition of this book, on time. I also wish to thank Josep-Anton Morgui for his useful comments which improved some of the chap- ters and to Paquita Ciller, whose scientific curiosity made it possible for this un- dertaking to see light. Thanks also to Anne Zanatta, for her careful correction of English style and grammar. I am also grateful to M. Prats, Anna Coll and in par- ticular to the Director ofthe Science Museum, Jorge Wagensberg, for his support and contribution in organizing the symposium here in Barcelona. And of course, thanks to the authors of the different chapters for their prompt contribution to this book. I also wish to thank the following scientific journals for allowing us to re- produce some of the published material appearing in this book. And in particular, Science for figures 11.7, 11.15, 11.17; Nature, for figures 11.1, 11.11, 11.16, 11.18, 11.19; Journal of Climate for figures 11.5, 11.8, 11.9, 11.10; Climate Dy- namics for figures 11.4, 11.6, 11.12, 11.13 and Table 11.1; Int. J. Clim. For figure 11.3 and Sedimentary Geology for figure 11.14. As a last point, prior to finishing this presentation, I would like to recall Stein- beck (East of Eden, 1952) when he says: 'Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too smalI... Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they're becoming atomized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses: the whole world over hisfence .' X Rod6 Barcelona, August 2002 Som d 'aquells que creuen que una curiositat envers el passat es troba justificada, per da- munt de tot, per la vida dei present. (We are 0/those who think that curiosity towards the past is justified, above all things, by life in the present) R. Lafont and eh. Anatole, History of Occitan literature, 1973
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