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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI15050388/00001
Notes
- Summary:
- Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread
climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For
example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since
the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was
accompanied by significant climatic changes across most
of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as
large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the
last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age
climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the
current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and
great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.
Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system
was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming
and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility
of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The
abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models
typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence,
future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate
surprises are to be expected.
The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been
well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is
little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural
and social scientists and policy-makers. At present, there is no plan for improving our understanding of the issue, no research priorities have been
identified, and no policy-making body is addressing the many concerns
raised by the potential for abrupt climate change. Given these gaps, the US
Global Change Research Program asked the National Research Council to
establish the Committee on Abrupt Climate Change and charged the group
to describe the current state of knowledge in the field and recommend ways
to fill in the knowledge gaps.
It is important not to be fatalistic about the threats posed by abrupt
climate change. Societies have faced both gradual and abrupt climate
changes for millennia and have learned to adapt through various mechanisms,
such as moving indoors, developing irrigation for crops, and migrating
away from inhospitable regions. Nevertheless, because climate change
will likely continue in the coming decades, denying the likelihood or
downplaying the relevance of past abrupt events could be costly. Societies
can take steps to face the potential for abrupt climate change. The committee
believes that increased knowledge is the best way to improve the effectiveness
of response, and thus that research into the causes, patterns, and
likelihood of abrupt climate change can help reduce vulnerabilities and increase
our adaptive capabilities. The committee’s research recommendations
fall into two broad categories: (1) implementation of targeted research
to expand instrumental and paleoclimatic observations and (2) implementation
of modeling and associated analysis of abrupt climate change and its
potential ecological, economic, and social impacts. What follows is a summary
of recommended research activities; more detail is presented in the
chapters, particularly in Chapter 6.
Record Information
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- Florida International University
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