National Academies Press: OpenBook
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change

A Science Strategy

Panel on Climate Variability on Decade-to-Century Time Scales
Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate
Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources
National Research Council

NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Washington, D.C. 1998

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page ii

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance.

Support for this project was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Contract No. 50-DKNA-5-00015. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the above-mentioned agency.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 98-88439
International Standard Book Number 0-309-06098-2

Additional copies of this report are available from:

National Academy Press
2101 Constitution Avenue, NW
Box 285
Washington, DC 20055
800-624-6242
202-334-3313 (in the Washington Metropolitan Area)
http://www.nap.edu

COVER: The Day It Happened, the oil painting reproduced on the cover of this book, is the work of Ilana Cernat of Bat-Yam, Israel. Dr. Cernat is linked to the world of intermediate-scale climate change through her son Michael Ghil, a member of the panel on Climate Variability on Decade-to-Century Time Scales. The Day It Happened (1988) is one of several of her paintings that express her concern for the future, particularly what sort of world we will be leaving to the generations to come. A lawyer by training and profession, Dr. Cernat began studying painting in her teens. Her work has been exhibited in Romania, Hungary, Israel, and the United States, and hangs in collections in other countries as well. Her 1989 painting The Eye of the Storm appeared on the cover of the 1995 NRC report on natural climate variability on decade-to-century time scales.

Copyright 1998 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page iii

PANEL ON CLIMATE VARIABILITY ON DECADE-TO-CENTURY TIME SCALES

DOUGLAS G. MARTINSON (Chair), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York

DAVID S. BATTISTI, University of Washington, Seattle

RAYMOND S. BRADLEY, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

JULIA E. COLE, University of Colorado, Boulder

RANA A. FINE, University of Miami, Florida

MICHAEL GHIL, University of California, Los Angeles

YOCHANAN KUSHNIR, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York

SYUKURO MANABE, Earth Frontier Research System, Tokyo, Japan

MICHAEL S. McCARTNEY, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts

M. PATRICK McCORMICK, Hampton University, Virginia

MICHAEL J. PRATHER, University of California, Irvine

EDWARD S. SARACHIK, University of Washington, Seattle

PIETER TANS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, Colorado

LONNIE G. THOMPSON, Ohio State University, Columbus

MICHAEL WINTON, Princeton University, New Jersey

Staff

ELLEN F. RICE, Program Officer (ending September 1, 1998)

PETER A. SCHULTZ, Program Officer

DIANE L. GUSTAFSON, Administrative Assistant

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page iv

CLIMATE RESEARCH COMMITTEE

THOMAS R. KARL (Chair), National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, North Carolina

ROBERT E. DICKINSON (Vice Chair), University of Arizona, Tucson

MAURICE BLACKMON, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado

BERT BOLIN, Osterskar, Sweden

JEFF DOZIER, University of California, Santa Barbara

JAMES GIRAYTYS, Consultant, Winchester, Virginia

JAMES E. HANSEN, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA, New York, New York

PHILIP E. MERILEES, Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, California

ROBERTA BALSTAD MILLER, Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network, Palisades, New York

S. ICHTIAQUE RASOOL, University of New Hampshire, Durham

STEVEN W. RUNNING, University of Montana, Missoula

EDWARD S. SARACHIK, University of Washington, Seattle

WILLIAM H. SCHLESINGER, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

KARL E. TAYLOR, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California

ANNE M. THOMPSON, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

Ex Officio Members

DOUGLAS G. MARTINS ON, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, New York

W. LAWRENCE GATES, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California

SOROOSH SOROOSHIAN, University of Arizona, Tucson

PETER J. WEBSTER, University of Colorado, Boulder

Staff

PETER A. SCHULTZ, Program Officer

LOWELL SMITH, Senior Program Officer (IPA) (ending September 30, 1998)

TENECIA A. BROWN, Senior Program Assistant

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page v

BOARD ON ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES AND CLIMATE

ERIC J. BARRON (Co-Chair), Pennsylvania State University, University Park

JAMES R. MAHONEY (Co-Chair), International Technology Corporation, Washington, D.C.

SUSAN K. AVERY, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder

LANCE F. BOSART, State University of New York, Albany

MARVIN A. GELLER, State University of New York, Stony Brook

DONALD M. HUNTEN, University of Arizona, Tucson

JOHN IMBRIE, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

CHARLES E. KOLB, Aerodyne Research, Inc., Billerica, Massachusetts

THOMAS J. LENNON, Sonalysts, Inc., Alexandria, Virginia

MARK R. SCHOEBERL, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

JOANNE SIMPSON, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

NIEN DAK SZE, Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts

Staff

ELBERT W. (JOE) FRIDAY, Jr., Director

H. FRANK EDEN, Senior Program Officer

LAURIE S. GELLER, Program Officer

ELLEN F. RICE, Program Officer/Reports Officer (ending September 1, 1998)

PETER A. SCHULTZ, Program Officer

DAVID H. SLADE, Senior Program Officer

LOWELL SMITH, Senior Program Officer (IPA) (ending September 30, 1998)

TENECIA A. BROWN, Senior Program Assistant

DIANE L. GUSTAFSON, Administrative Assistant

ROBIN MORRIS, Administrative Associate

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page vi

COMMISSION ON GEOSCIENCES, ENVIRONMENT, AND RESOURCES

GEORGE M. HORNBERGER (Chair), University of Virginia, Charlottesville

PATRICK R. ATKINS, Aluminum Company of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

JERRY F. FRANKLIN, University of Washington, Seattle

B. JOHN GARRICK, PLG, Inc., St. George, Utah

THOMAS E. GRAEDEL, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

DEBRA KNOPMAN, Progressive Foundation, Washington, D.C.

KAI N. LEE, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts

JUDITH E. MCDOWELL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts

RICHARD A. MESERVE, Covington & Burling, Washington, D.C.

HUGH C. MORRIS, Canadian Global Change Program, Delta, British Columbia

RAYMOND A. PRICE, Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario

H. RONALD PULLIAM, University of Georgia, Athens

THOMAS C. SCHELLING, University of Maryland, College Park

VICTORIA J. TSCHINKEL, Landers and Parsons, Tallahassee, Florida

E-AN ZEN, University of Maryland, College Park

MARY LOU ZOBACK, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California

Staff

ROBERT HAMILTON, Executive Director

GREGORY SYMMES, Assistant Executive Director

JEANETTE SPOON, Administrative Officer

SANDI FITZPATRICK, Administrative Associate

MARQUITA SMITH, Administrative Assistant/Technology Analyst

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page vii

Preface

In 1990, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its monumental scientific assessment on climate change. This document presented, for the first time, a broad international scientific perspective on the status of our understanding of global climate change, focusing predominantly on anthropogenic change. While first recognized as a scientific issue nearly 100 years ago and the subject of many reports, this first attempt at producing a comprehensive assessment of the problem was both timely and energizing. It helped focus our collective scientific attention on key issues, by identifying, among other things, critical gaps in our understanding of the fundamental physics, chemistry, and biology of global change.

One significant gap involved our meager understanding and documentation of natural variability in the Earth's climate system which provides a context for evaluating the significance of human-induced changes. The climate change and variability that we experience will be a commingling of the ever changing natural climate state with any anthropogenic change. While we are ultimately interested in understanding and predicting how climate will change, regardless of the cause, an ability to differentiate anthropogenic change from natural variability is fundamental to help guide policy decisions, treaty negotiations, and adaptation versus mitigation strategies. Without a clear understanding of how climate has changed naturally in the past, and the mechanisms involved, our ability to interpret any future change will be significantly confounded and our ability to predict future change severely curtailed.

Recognizing this gap, the Climate Research Committee of the National Research Council's Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, organized a workshop in 1992 involving the world's most prominent climate researchers, to assess the state of understanding of natural climate variability. The workshop focused on natural climate change that occurs slowly, sometimes remaining almost imperceptible for many years, decades, or even a century. These "decade-to-century" (dec-cen) time scales are the same ones over which anthropogenic climate change is expected to manifest itself, and thus the ones most likely to confound our interpretation and prediction of observed climate change as it relates to anthropogenic change. The results of this workshop, elaborated and published in a peer-reviewed National Academy of Science volume in 1995, showed considerable progress in our understanding of dec-cen climate variability on a broad number of fronts.

At the same time the NRC workshop was being organized in the United States, the Joint Scientific Committee, an international scientific oversight body for guiding international climate research under the auspices of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), called on a group of experts to consider possible future directions for climate research. The results of their deliberations were published in 1992 in a report entitled CLIVAR—A Study of Climate Variability and Predictability. This document proposed the need for a new internationally-coordinated, interdisciplinary research program on climate variability and predictability, with decade-to-century time scale variability (natural and anthropogenic) playing a central role. As the science plan for the CLIVAR program was being developed, the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), also active in the international process, began formalizing plans to advance the development of a U.S. national science plan for addressing climate variability and change on decade-to-century time scales. The manifestation of these plans would contribute to the international effort while clearly defining and articulating our own particular national scientific interests. This led to the formation of the NRC panel on Climate Variability on Decade-to-Century Time Scales (the Dec-Cen panel).

The NRC's Climate Research Committee (CRC) is the U.S. national committee to the WCRP. The Dec-Cen panel, as well as the complementary Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System (GOALS) and Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) panels (addressing shorter time scales and key processes), were established under the CRC to interface with the WCRP and CLIVAR organizational

Page viii Cite
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page viii

Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change

A Science Strategy

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page ix

Acknowledgment of Reviewers

This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the NRC's Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making the published report as sound as possible, and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their participation in the review of this report:

Russ E. Davis, University of California, San Diego

W. Lawrence Gates, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

George M. Hornberger, University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Upmanu Lall, Utah State University

Gerald A. Meehl, National Center for Atmospheric Research

Richard S. Stolarski, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

John M. Wallace, University of Washington

John E. Walsh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Warren A. Washington, National Center for Atmospheric Research

In addition, we appreciate the post-review material and comments from Russ Davis, Robert Dickinson, Upmanu Lall, and Peter Niiler that helped to provide a more balanced discussion in some key areas. While the individuals listed above have provided constructive comments and suggestions, it must be emphasized that responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page x

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. William A. Wulf is president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce M. Alberts and Dr. William A. Wulf are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
×

Page xi

Contents

Executive Summary

1

1. Introduction

6

Society and a Varying Climate System

6

A U.S. Dec-Cen Science Strategy

7

2. Climate Attributes That Influence Society

9

Precipitation and Water Availability

10

Temperature

11

Solar Radiation

15

Storms

17

Sea Level

20

Ecosystems

22

3. Modes of Climate Variability

25

Climate Patterns in the Atmosphere

26

Other Patterns of Interest

28

Co-variability in the Climate System: Coupled Patterns

28

The Role of Dec-Cen Variability in Global Warming

35

Fundamental Issues and Questions

36

4. Mechanisms and Predictability

39

The Nature of Climate Prediction

39

Short-, Medium-, and Long-Range Climate Prediction

40

Prediction and Mechanisms

41

The Uses of Climate Prediction

43

5. Climate-System Components

48

Atmospheric Composition and Radiative Forcing

49

Atmospheric Circulation

62

Hydrologic Cycle

71

Ocean Circulation

80

Cryosphere

97

Land and Vegetation

106

6. Crosscutting Issues

111

Climate Information

111

Coupled-Model Development and Infrastructure

120

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1998. Decade-to-Century-Scale Climate Variability and Change: A Science Strategy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6129.
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Page xii

Detection, Attribution, and Simulation

122

Linkage Across Time Scales

123

7 Conclusions and Recommendations

124

References

126

Acronyms and Abbreviations

141

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Society today may be more vulnerable to global-scale, long-term, climate change than ever before. Even without any human influence, past records show that climate can be expected to continue to undergo considerable change over decades to centuries. Measures for adaption and mitigation will call for policy decisions based on a sound scientific foundation. Better understanding and prediction of climate variations can be achieved most efficiently through a nationally recognized "dec-cen" science plan. This book articulates the scientific issues that must be addressed to advance us efficiently toward that understanding and outlines the data collection and modeling needed.

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