Detection of greenhouse-gas-induced climatic change. Progress report, July 1, 1994--July 31, 1995

摘要

The objective of this research is to assembly and analyze instrumental climate data and to develop and apply climate models as a basis for detecting greenhouse-gas-induced climatic change, and validation of General Circulation Models. In addition to changes due to variations in anthropogenic forcing, including greenhouse gas and aerosol concentration changes, the global climate system exhibits a high degree of internally-generated and externally-forced natural variability. To detect the anthropogenic effect, its signal must be isolated from the 'noise' of this natural climatic variability. A high quality, spatially extensive data base is required to define the noise and its spatial characteristics. To facilitate this, available land and marine data bases will be updated and expanded. The data will be analyzed to determine the potential effects on climate of greenhouse gas and aerosol concentration changes and other factors. Analyses will be guided by a variety of models, from simple energy balance climate models to coupled atmosphere ocean-General Circulation Models. These analyses are oriented towards obtaining early evidence of anthropogenic climatic change that would lead either to confirmation, rejection, or modification of model projections, and towards the statistical validation of General Circulation Model control runs and perturbation experiments.