News Archive
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globalchange.gov Update for 27 February 2002
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global change news
President Announces Clear Skies & Global Climate Change Initiatives
On 14 February, President George W. Bush announced a new approach to the
challenge of global climate change. According to the White House, this
approach is designed to harness the power of markets and technological
innovation. In a speech delivered at NOAA offices in Silver Spring,
Maryland, the President said, ". . . we must clean our air, and we must
address the issue of global climate change. We must also act in a serious
and responsible way, given the scientific uncertainties. While these
uncertainties remain, we can begin now to address the human factors that
contribute to climate change. Wise action now is an insurance policy
against future risks." The President's announcement included a proposed
effort to cut power plant emissions, called the Clear Skies Initiative,
as well as other initiatives designed to reduce greenhouse gas intensity,
spur investments in renewable energy, and stimulate development of
technologies to combat global climate change.
White House. The full text of the President's
speech and additional information about the proposed initiatives are
available as follows:
An ocean circulation system that brings cool water from ocean depths
to the surface has been slowing down since the mid-1970s, causing an
increase in sea surface temperatures along the Equator in the Pacific
Ocean and a decrease of carbon dioxide (CO2)
released into the atmosphere, say NOAA scientists. "Looking back at
records for the past 50 years, we found that the ocean currents flowing
in the north-south direction have been slowing down in the tropical
Pacific Ocean since the mid-1970s," said Michael McPhaden, a senior
research scientist at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
in Seattle. His findings, which were co-authored by Dongxiao Zhang
from NOAA's Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean at the
University of Washington, were published in the 7 February issue of the
science journal Nature.
"Cool water hundreds of feet below the surface typically flows from the
mid-latitudes to the tropics, and these waters are eventually upwelled-or
brought up-to the surface along the equator," McPhaden explained. "When
the circulation slows down, the supply of cool water for equatorial
upwelling decreases. In our study we found a reduction of 25 percent,
causing the sea surface temperatures in a band about 600 miles on
either side of the Equator to rise about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since
the mid-1970s." Not only does the temperature rise, but the amount of
carbon dioxide released by the equatorial Pacific Ocean decreases. At
present, the equatorial Pacific is the largest oceanic source of carbon
dioxide to the atmosphere.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Press release available here.
NASA's Aqua spacecraft is ready to ship to Vandenberg Air Force Base,
Calif. to begin launch preparations. Aqua's 170-mile journey will
begin late Sunday night, February 24 from TRW's Space Park manufacturing
facility, via a special shipping container. Aqua will arrive at Vandenberg
on Monday, February 25, where it will undergo final tests and integration
with a Delta II rocket for launch in April. Aqua, the latest in the Earth
Observing System (EOS) series, will collect measurements of rainfall,
snow, sea ice, temperature, humidity, vegetation, soil moisture and clouds
as part of NASA's long-term, coordinated research study of changes in
the global environment. Aqua's instruments will gather important data
about global energy and water cycles, enabling scientists to monitor
climate variations and trends.
NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center. Press release available here.
For more information, visit http://www.aqua.nasa.gov/.
global change news
November 2001-January 2002 Warmest on Record in U.S.
Global temperatures warmest on record in January
The contiguous United States experienced record warmth during the
November 2001 through January 2002 three-month period, scientists at
NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., reported
in February. The January global temperature was the warmest in the
123-year surface record. Using the world's largest weather database,
NOAA scientists calculated conditions for the past three months.
"Unusual warmth persisted across a large part of the contiguous United
States during the past three months resulting in the warmest November
through January since national records began in 1895," said Jay
Lawrimore, chief of NOAA's Climate Monitoring Branch at the Asheville
center. The preliminary nationally averaged temperature was 39.94°F
(4.41°C), which was 4.3°F (2.4°C) above the 1895-2001
long-term mean. The previous record for the same three-month period
was established in 1999-2000. Since 1976 the nationally averaged
November-January temperature has risen at a rate of 1.2°F
(0.7°C) per decade.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. Press release available here.
This month, dozens of scientists on the ground, in the air and using
satellite observations will begin a multi-year experiment to study winter
snow packs on the Colorado side of the Rocky Mountains. The purpose of
this NASA-funded experiment is to improve the estimation of snow amount
and forecasting of spring flooding due to snowmelt, and to study the role
of cold lands within Earth's climate. Kyle McDonald, a research scientist
in the terrestrial science research element at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will be among the scientists and students
from six federal agencies and many universities that will be using skis,
snowmobiles and aircraft to survey and sample snow during this NASA Cold
Land Processes Experiment. They will also use microwave measurements
from satellites and aircraft to measure characteristics of the snow pack
and the freeze/thaw state of the land surface. The Cold Land Processes
Experiment is a research mission concerned with frozen landscapes, where
water is frozen either seasonally or permanently because of water stored
in snow and ice cover. Cold land regions form an important component of
Earth's hydrologic cycle and interact significantly with water resources,
global weather and climate.
NASA Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. Press release available here.
global change news
National Academy of Engineering Taps NCAR Climate Modeler
The National Academy of Engineering has elected Warren Washington,
a climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, to
its membership. Washington, who heads NCAR's Climate Change Research
Section, was honored with membership to the prestigious society
"for pioneering the development of coupled climate models, their use
on parallel supercomputing architectures, and their interpretation."
For over 20 years Washington's group at NCAR has used coupled climate
models to estimate the effects of increasing greenhouse gases. The
U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation funded
the research. "At the beginning of this effort, the components of the
climate models were fairly simple, compared to today's state-of-the-art
climate models," says Washington. To keep up with the models' increasing
complexity and growing need for computing speed, Washington has more
recently led an effort to apply parallel supercomputing architectures,
in which multiple processors perform many calculations simultaneously,
to climate change projections.
National Center for Atmospheric
Research. Press release available here.
global change data
New NASA Global Change Master Directory Available
NASA's Global Change Master On-line Directory (GCMD) 2002 provides
descriptions of Earth science data sets and services relevant to global
change research. This directory will help students and scientists find a
wealth of data from NASA's Earth science program and other organizations.
The Global Change Master Directory now holds more than 10,600 descriptions
of Earth and environmental science data, with information on how to
obtain the data and/or direct links to data sources. The individual
data set descriptions were contributed by more than 1,300 data centers,
government agencies, universities, research institutions and private
researchers around the world.
Access to the directory is available through http://globalchange.nasa.gov/
or http://gcmd.nasa.gov/.
Selected portions of the directory can be placed on a CD for users without
Internet connections. However, new data set descriptions are added daily,
and others are updated on an ongoing basis.
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