These results from the National Research Programme on Climate Change of the Netherlands offer a synthesis of present knowledge in the fields of: source and sinks of greenhouse gases and aerosols; land-atmosphere interactions; the global energy balance; and radiative forcing and climate variability.

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the modern world. The chemistry of the air within the framework of the climate system forms the main focus of this monograph. This problem-based approach to presenting global atmospheric processes begins with the chemical evolution of the climate system in order to evaluate the effects of changing air composition as well as possibilities for interference within these processes. Chemical interactions of the atmosphere with the biosphere and hydrosphere are treated in the sense of a multi-phase chemistry. From the perspective of a "chemical climatology" the book offers an approach to solving the problem of climate change through chemistry.

21. Simulating Future Climate G. J. Boer 1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489 2 International Aspects . . . . . . . . . . . 490 3 Simulating Historical and Future Climate 492 4 Climate Change in the 20th Century . . . 495 5 Simulating Future Climate Change 498 6 Climate Impact, Adaptation, and Mitigation 501 7 Summary . 502 Index 505 PREFACE Numerical modeling ofthe global atmosphere has entered a new era. Whereas atmospheric modeling was once the domain ofa few research units at universities or government laboratories, it can now be performed almost anywhere thanks to the affordability of computing power. Atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) are being used by a rapidly growing scientific community in a wide range of applications. With widespread interest in anthropogenic climate change, GCMs have a role also in informing policy discussions. Many of the scientists using GCMs have backgrounds in fields other than atmospheric sciences and may be unaware of how GCMs are constructed. Recognizing this explosion in the application of GCMs, we organized a two week course in order to give young scientists who are relatively new to the field of atmospheric modeling a thorough grounding in the basic principles on which GCMs are constructed, an insight into their strengths and weaknesses, and guid ance on how meaningful numerical experiments are formulated and analyzed. Sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other institu tions, this Advanced Study Institute (ASI) took place May 25-June 5, 1998, at II Ciocco, a remote hotel on a Tuscan hillside in Italy.

Elegant, novel explanation of climate change, emphasizing physical understanding and concepts, while avoiding complex mathematics, supported by excellent color illustrations.

The study of the earth's climate requires reliable global data sets to validate numerical simulation models and to identify regional and global fluctuations and trends. This book presents ways to obtain such data from space-borne and ground-based measurements, both passive and active, over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It describes the basics of such methods together with the most recent advancements and spans the field from clouds and the planetary radiation budget to surface processes and ocean properties. Each subject is backed by extensive reference lists to enable readers to probe more deeply.

Water is the most effective agent in the climate system to modulate energy transfer by radiative processes, through its exchanges of latent heat and within cascades of chemical processes. It is the source of all life on earth, and once convective clouds are formed, it enables large vertical transports of momentum, heat and various atmospheric constituents up to levels above the tropical tropopause. Water triggers very complex processes at the earth's continental surfaces and within the oceans. At last, water in its gaseous phase is the most important greenhouse-gas! Numerical modelling and measurements of the state of the present climate system needs a very thorough understanding of all these processes and their various interactions and forcings. This is a prerequisite for more substantial forecasts of future states in all scales of time, from days to centuries. Therefore, the management of the World Climate Research Programme established in 1988 the new programme GEWEX (Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment). GEWEX is specifically defined to determine the energy and water transports in the fast components of the climate system with the presently available modelling and measurement means and to provide new capabilities for the future. Research in GEWEX must further develop methods to determine the influence of climatic anomalies on available water resources.

It is generally accepted within the scientific community that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are primarily responsible for a recent warming in global climate and that current trajectories of emissions may lead to potentially catastrophic changes in climate. While reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon dioxide, could lead to a stabilisation of global temperatures, this requires international agreements which have yet to be achieved. A possible alternative, which has been widely mooted is to use methods known as geoengineering as an alternative way of limiting increases in global temperature. Geoengineering techniques fall into two main categories of carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management; within each of these there are a number of options. Following on from “Carbon Capture” (volume 29 in this series), Geoengineering of the Climate System presents an overview of the technologies currently being considered as large scale solutions to climate change, and considers some of the possible benefits and disadvantages of each. Invited contributions have been received by many of the leading experts on these technologies, and the volume provides a comprehensive overview of both carbon dioxide reduction and solar radiation management methods. These give rise to important ethical and governance issues which are also explored. Written with active researchers, postgraduate students and policy-makers in mind, the latest addition to the Issues in Environmental Science & Technology series presents a balanced and informed view of this important field of research and is an essential addition to any environmental science library.

Our realisation of how profoundly glaciers and ice sheets respond to climate change and impact sea level and the environment has propelled their study to the forefront of Earth system science. Aspects of this multidisciplinary endeavour now constitute major areas of research. This book is named after the international summer school held annually in the beautiful alpine village of Karthaus, Northern Italy, and consists of twenty chapters based on lectures from the school. They cover theory, methods, and observations, and introduce readers to essential glaciological topics such as ice-flow dynamics, polar meteorology, mass balance, ice-core analysis, paleoclimatology, remote sensing and geophysical methods, glacial isostatic adjustment, modern and past glacial fluctuations, and ice sheet reconstruction. The chapters were written by thirty-four contributing authors who are leading international authorities in their fields. The book can be used as a graduate-level textbook for a university course, and as a valuable reference guide for practising glaciologists and climate scientists.

This volume contains a selection of scientific papers which were presented at an international workshop held in Wengen, Switzerland, in September 1998. A number of state-of-the-art papers are presented, which discuss scientific, technological and socio-economic issues related to large forest fires which occur both in the tropics and in the extra-tropical regions. The book comprises some of the most recent research conducted in the context of the large forest fires which occurred in South-East Asia, Australia, Brazil and Africa in late 1997 and early 1998; while essentially due to human interference, these particular fires appear to have been enhanced by the particularly strong El Niño episode which prevailed at that time. This interdisciplinary volume addresses a number of topics, in particular the contribution to climatic change by the greenhouse gases and aerosols emitted by large forest fires, the monitoring of fires both during and after combustion through satellite remote-sensing techniques, and numerical studies of the perturbation to the climate system using general circulation climate models.