The Geo-Sciences Panel is a synonym for the Special Programme on Global Transport Mechanisms in the Geo-Sciences. This Programme is one of the special programs established by the NATO Science Committee to promote the study of a specific topic using the usual NATO structures, namely, Advanced Research Workshops, Advanced Study Institutes, Conferences, Collaborative Research Grants, Research-Studies and Lecture Visits. The aim of the Programme is to stimulate and facilitate international col laboration among scientists of the member countries in selected areas of global transport mechanisms in the Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and asthenosphere, and the interactions between these global transport processes. Created in 1982, the Geo-Sciences Panel followed the Air Sea Interactions Panel which was very successful in reviewing mechanisms at the air-sea-ice interface. Initially the Geo-Sciences Panel recognized the importance of magma chambers, ore deposits, geochemical cycles, seismic activity and hydrological studies. However, the Panel was rap idly convinced that the climate system is one of the most important sys tems in which to promote research on global transport mechanisms. Consequently, the Panel welcomed the organization of a course on Physically Based Modelling and Simulation of Climate and Climatic Change. This course was launched in Belgium in 1984 during both the Liege colloquium on Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere tlodels and the Louvain-Ia Neuve General Assembly of the European Geophysical Society. Rapidly scientists recognized that this course was timely and would be well received by the climate community, especially by junior researchers in this multi- and inter-disciplinary field.

This collaborative book aims to offer a comprehensive introduction to global climate, the way it is currently changing, the role of earth, air and satellite observation and monitoring, and subsequent climate modelling. It focuses on the interaction between natural and anthropogenic human- made change factors. The book emphasizes the importance of capturing climatic data and the use of that data in computer-based climatic modelling.

The ocean plays a central role in determining the climate of the earth. The oceanic circulation largely controls the temporal evolution of cli mate changes resulting from human activities such as the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and also affects the magnitude and regional distribution of those changes. On interannual and longer time scales the ocean is, through its interaction with the atmosphere, a source of important natural climate variations which we are only now beginning to recognise but whose cause has yet to be properly determined. Chem ical and biological processes in the ocean are linked to climate change, particularly through interaction with the global carbon cycle. A quantitative understanding of the oceanic role in the climate system requires models which include many complex processes and interactions, and which are systematically verified with observations. This is the ob jective of global research programs such as TOGA, WOCE, and JGOFS. Coupled numerical models of the oceanic and atmospheric circulation constitute the basis of every climate simulation. Increasingly it is recog nized that in addition a biological/chemical component is necessary to capture the pathways of carbon and other trace gases. The development of such coupled models is a challenging task which needs scientists who must be cognizant of several other disciplines beyond their own specialty.

An international team of experts address the questions of climate and sea level change.

Climate Systems Modeling presents an interdisciplinary and comprehensive study of the dynamics of the whole global system. As a comprehensive text it will appeal to students and researchers concerned with any aspect of climatology and the study of related topics in the broad earth and environmental sciences.

Climate is the most important component of the Earth's environment and climatic fluctuations have a strong impact on water supplies, vegetation, energy use etc. Thus our understanding of the climatic system is of utmost importance. Leading experts in the field of climate modelling and paleoclimatology present the most recent methods for reconstructing past climatic variations and for modelling the climatic system and its evolution. The first of three parts is devoted to the climatic system and the physical basis for its modelling; the second summarizes the evolution of the global atmosphere, the ocean, the continents, the biosphere, and the ice sheets during recent climatic cycles; the last part focusses on the understanding of past and future climatic changes.

This book presents detailed descriptions of chaos for continuous-time systems. It is the first-ever book to consider chaos as an input for differential and hybrid equations. Chaotic sets and chaotic functions are used as inputs for systems with attractors: equilibrium points, cycles and tori. The findings strongly suggest that chaos theory can proceed from the theory of differential equations to a higher level than previously thought. The approach selected is conducive to the in-depth analysis of different types of chaos. The appearance of deterministic chaos in neural networks, economics and mechanical systems is discussed theoretically and supported by simulations. As such, the book offers a valuable resource for mathematicians, physicists, engineers and economists studying nonlinear chaotic dynamics.

The global climate of the Earth has significantly varied over the last millennia. On a regional scale, the climate has varied and does presently vary on many different time scales, leading to a continuously changing pattern of temperatures, humidity, precipitation, with important effects on the whole terrestrial biosphere. Physicist are interested in understanding the mechanism at work by gathering data and properly analysing them, by building theoretical models and, if possible, making predictions on the future evolution of the system. Along these lines, an important question is to understand the role of the solar forcing, in order to unravel the internal mechanisms of variability of the Earth's climate from the variable forcing of the Sun. On the other hand, one can learn about the past solar variability by reading into the terrestrial archives that provide us with proxy data on the history of both the Sun and the climate. Thus, realizing that the Sun and the Earth form a closely coupled system, where the variable properties of the former may affect in many subtle ways the behaviour of the latter, is an important step toward the understanding of both.This book is explicitly devoted to these issues. First, it is important to obtain reliable data from terrestrial archives, and to properly date the records that have been measured. The first part of the book is devoted to these crucial aspects, dealing with various types of proxy data and with the difficult issue of the dating of the records. Once obtained, the data has to be interpreted. This process nowadays relies upon a plethora of data analysis methods that explicitly take into account the nonlinear nature of the system and try to elucidate the dynamics and the main processes active in the measured system. The second part of the book is devoted to the issue of data analysis and prediction. Finally, once the data has been interpreted and analyzed, theoretical models have to be built describing the dynamics of the system considered. Due to the extreme complexity of the Sun/Earth system (as well as of its components, the Sun itself and the Earth's climate), drastic simplifications in the modelling efforts have to be accepted and one has to bear in mind that the models probably are nothing more than a pale image of the real dynamics. The third part of the book is devoted to the theoretical and numerical modelling of the solar and climatic variability, and of their complex interactions. This volume gives an up-to-date view of the present state of this field.

The first conference of its kind explicitly designed to encourage the integration of the climate change community with the energy policy- making and research communities. The book looks at climate change on many levels including its economic impact and its effect on energy technologies. Of interest to energy researchers and policy makers.