Additional Readings

Altabet, M A, et al., 2002. "The effect of millennial-scale changes in Arabian Sea denitrification on atmospheric CO₂." Nature 10 January 2002, vol 415: 159-162. Changes in nitrogen concentration in sediment cores from the Arabian Sea suggest a change in the rate release of nitrogen from the ocean during glacial periods.

Alley, Richard B. and Michael L. Bender. 1998. "Greenland Ice Cores: Frozen in Time." Scientific American 278(2): 80-85. Glacial ice preserves a record of the earth's climate and atmosphere.

Alley, Richard, et al. "Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable changes." Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press (2002). A special report by the National Academy of Science.

Arendt, A. A., et al. 2002. "Rapid wastage of Alaska glaciers and their contribution to rising sea level." Science 297: 382-386 (2002). Alaskan glaciers are melting twice as fast as previously thought.

Ayres, Robert U. 2001. "How Economists Have Misjudged Global Warming." World Watch 14(5): 12-25. The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto climate treaty because it believed reducing carbon dioxide emissions would hurt the economy. This author argues that reducing pollution could help the economy prosper.

Beardsley, T. 2000. "Dissecting a Hurricane." Scientific American 282(3): 80-85. Scientists fly into the eye of a hurricane to gain new insights into how they work.

Becker, L., et al. "Impact event at the Permian-Triassic boundary: evidence from extraterrestrial noble gases in fullerenes." Science 291: 1530-1533 (2001). More evidence that an asteroid impact may have caused mass extinction at the end of the Permian epoch.

Bentley, Charles R. 1997. "Rapid Sea-Level Rise Soon from West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse?" Science 275(5303):1077-1078. A cautiously optimistic appraisal of the potential for global warming to cause rapid melting of Antarctic ice.

Berger, A. & M.F. Loutre. 2002. "An exceptionally long interglacial ahead?" Science 297: 1287-1288 (2002). We may be causing a permanent warm age.

Bolin, B. 1998. "The Kyoto negotiations on Climate Change: A Science Perspective." Science 279: 330-331.What's the science behind the Kyoto Protocol?

Boyle, R. H. 1999. "Global Warming: You're Getting Warmer." Audubon 101(6): 80-87. An interview with climatologist James Hansen.

Bremer, D.J., et al. 1996. "Effect of Elevated Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Open-Top Chambers on Transpiration in a Tallgrass Prairie," Journal of Environmental Quality 25(4): 691-701. Field studies of plant responses to elevated CO₂ can give very different results than greenhouse experiments.

Cerveny, R. S. & K.J. Coakley. 2002. "A weekly cycle in atmospheric carbon dioxide." Geophysical Research Letters, 29, 10.1029/2001GL013952 (2002). Records at Mauna Loa Observatory show lower concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on weekends than during the week when cities have more traffic.

Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources. 2000. Reconciling Observation of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. A good presentation of the science behind global climate change.

Darst, Robert G. 2001. Smokestack Diplomacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. A fascinating look at international environmental politics.

Dauncey, Guy. 2001. Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers. Practical actions for individuals, communities, and nations to combat global climate change.

De Leo, G A., et al. 2001. "Carbon emissions: The economic benefits of the Kyoto Protocol." Nature 413: 478-479 (4 October 2001). Concludes that if the costs in terms of damage to human health, material goods, agriculture and the environment caused by greenhouse gas emissions are included in the equation, the economic argument against Kyoto is untenable.

Dickson, Bob, et al. 2002. "Rapid freshening of the deep North Atlantic Ocean over the past four decades." Nature 416: 832-837. Evidence suggests that deep ocean circulation in the North Atlantic has changed over the past four decades. Is this evidence of global climate change?

Epstein, Paul R. 2000. "Is Global Warming Harmful to Health?" Scientific American 283 (2): 50-57. Suggests that infectious diseases will surge as the climate warms.

Falkowski, Paul G. 2002. "The Ocean's Invisible forest." Scientific American 287(2): 54-61. Marine algae play a much larger role than previously thought in balancing the earth's climate, absorbing about as much carbon each year as all terrestrial plants.

Finney, B. P., et al. 2002. "Fisheries productivity in the northeastern Pacific Ocean over the past 2,200 years." Nature 416: 729-733. Paleoecological studies show that fish stocks fluctuate widely over periods of centuries, apparently due to climate changes.

Flavin, Christopher. 1997. "Climate Change and Storm Damage: The Insurance Costs Keep Rising." World Watch Journal January/February 1997: 10-11. Insurance companies are quite worried about potential losses if global climate change brings more severe weather.

Freeman, C., et al. "Export of organic carbon from peat soils." Nature 412: 785 (2001). Oxidation of peat lands may be both a consequence and a cause of global warming.

Frischetti, Mark. 2001. "Drowning New Orleans." Scientific American 285(4): 76-85. A major hurricane could swamp the city under 20 feet of water, killing thousands.

Ganopolski, A. & S. Rahmstorf. 2001. "Rapid changes of glacial climate simulated in a coupled climate model." Nature 409: 153-158 (2001). Suggests that the world's oceans may not have stopped circulating in glacial times, as has been thought. Instead, the site in the North Atlantic where cold, salty water sinks to the deep ocean may just have shifted slightly south.

Gelbspan, Ross. 1997. The Heat is On. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Criticizes fossil fuel and conservative politicians who confuse the public about global warming and the disruptive weather patterns that mark its initial stages.

Govindan, R. B., et al. 2002. "Global climate models violate scaling of the observed atmospheric variability." Physical Review Letters, 89, 28501 (2002). Models simulating global climate don't capture fine-scale temperature variations.

Grimmond, C. S. B., et al. 2002. "Local-scale fluxes of CO₂ in urban environments: Methodological challenges and results from Chicago." Environmental Pollution 116: 243-254 (2002). City centers emit CO₂, but leafy suburbs actually absorb it.

Grubb, Michael. 2001. "Hold tight at The Hague." Climate Policy 1(1): 3-4, See several other articles by Noble, Yamagata, Haites, Mastepanov, Begg, vrolijk, Sepledge, Cadena, et al summarizing the climate negotiations at the Hague.

Hall, A. & R. J. Stouffer. 2001. "An abrupt climate event in a coupled ocean-atmosphere simulation without external forcing." Nature 409: 171-174 (2001). A new model shows how the ocean's circulation could change over a 15,000-year period if the climate remained as it is today, that is, without any further human impacts.

Harris, Robert N. and David S. Chapman. 1997. "Borehole Temperatures and a Baseline for 20th-Century Global Warming Estimates." Science 275(5306): 1618-1622. Deep wells provide a good record of climate over the past millennium. This study suggests that recent global warming is greater than previously suspected.

Hay, S. I., et al. 2002. "Climate change and the resurgence of malaria in the East African Highlands." Nature 415: 905-909 (2002). Climate change can't explain the growth of malaria in the highlands of East Africa. Drawing simplistic links between global warming and local disease patterns could lead to mistaken policy decisions.

Herzog, Howard, et al. 2000. "Capturing Greenhouse gases." Scientific American 282 (2): 72-89. Discusses ways to collect CO₂ and bury it deep underground or in the ocean.

Hungate, B.A., et al. 1997. "Stimulation of Grassland Nitrogen Cycling Under Carbon Dioxide Enrichment." Oecologia 109(1): 149-153. CO₂ enhances plant growth but can cause stress in nitrogen-limited ecosystems.

Hurrell, J. W. "Decadal trends in the North Atlantic Oscillation: regional temperatures and precipitation." Science 269: 676-679 (1995). Understanding climatic variations in the arctic could help researchers predict the effects of global warming.

Jacobs, S. S., C.F.Giulivi and P.A. Mele. 2002. "Freshening of the Ross Sea during the late 20th century." Science 297: 386-389 (2002). Alaskan glaciers are melting faster than previously thought.

Kaiho, K., et al. "End-Permian catastrophe by a bolide impact: evidence of a gigantic release of sulfur from the mantle." Geology 29: 815-818 (2001). Suggests that an asteroid impact killed 95 percent of all species at the end of the Permian.

Karl, T. R. and K. E. Trenberth. 1999. "The Human Impact of Climate." Scientific American 281(6): 100-105 (December 1999). A good review of the current state of climate research.

Karl, Thomas R., et al. 1997. "The Coming Climate." Scientific American 276(5): 78-83. A cautious analysis of potential for severe weather and other climate extremes as a result of global warming.

Karliner, Joshua, et al. 1997. "The Barons of Bromide: The Corporate Forces Behind Toxic Poisoning and Ozone Depletion." The Ecologist 27(3): 90-98. A biting critique of the bromine industry.

Khodri, M., et al. 2001. "Simulating the amplification of orbital forcing by ocean feedbacks in the last glaciation." Nature 410 (6828): 570-574. Including ocean effects in global climate models helps explain the Milankovitch theory.

Koch, G.W. and H.A. Mooney, eds. 1996. Carbon Dioxide and Terrestrial Ecosystems. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Some ecosystems will flourish under CO₂ enrichment while others will be disturbed.

Koutavas, A., et al. 2002. "El Niño-like pattern in ice age tropical Pacific sea surface temperature." Science 297: 226-230 (2002). During past ice ages, the tropical Pacific Ocean behaved rather as it does today in an El Niño event, bringing downpours to some places and drought to others.

Knutti, Reto, et al. 2002. "Constraints on radiative forcing and future climate change from observations and climate model ensembles." Nature 416: 719-723 (18 April 2002). New climate models suggest that there is a 40% probability that global temperatures will exceed the range predicted by the IPCC, but only a 5% probability that warming will fall below that range.

Kump, Lee R. 2002. "Reducing uncertainty about carbon dioxide as a climate driver." Nature 419:188-190 (2002); doi:10.1038/nature01087. Discusses ways to make climate prediction more accurate.

Leggett, Jeremy. 2001. Carbon War: Global Warming and the end of the Oil Era. Routledge Press. An activist describes the scientific, governmental, and business perspectives on global warming.

Lindzen, R. S., M.D. Chou, & A.Y. Hou. 2001. "Does the Earth have an adaptive infrared -iris?" Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 82: 417- 432 (2001). Cloud effects may balance global warming.

Luterbacher, Urs and Detlef f. Sprinz. 2001. International Relations and Global Climate Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Conceptual, theoretical, and methodological approaches to dealing with global climate change.

Lynch, Colum. 1998. "Stormy Weather." The Amicus Journal 19(4): 25-29. Introduction to the international conference in Kyoto--and the controversies.

Lynch-Stieglitz, J., W.B. Curry, & N. Slowey. "Weaker Gulf Stream in the Florida Straits during the Last Glacial Maximum." Nature 402: 644 (1999). Evidence suggests that during the last Ice Age, some 12,000 years ago, the deep-water current transported far less water than it does today and the sinking of dense water at the Poles may have stopped entirely.

Manne, Alan S. and Richard G. Richels. 2001. "An alternative approach to establishing tradeoffs among greenhouse gases." Nature 410 (6829): 675-677. A model is proposed for establishing equivalences between greenhouse gases for the purpose of emissions trading.

Marland, Gregg, Kristy Fruit, & Roger Sedjo. 2001. "Accounting for sequestered carbon: the question of permanence." Environmental Science and Policy 4(6): 259-268. Suggests that emissions credits should be rented, not sold, to account for re-emission when forests are cut.

Milly, P. C. D., et al. 2002. "Increasing risk of great floods in a changing climate." Nature 415: 514-517 (31 January 2002). Records show that the frequency of floods with discharges exceeding 100-year levels increased substantially during the twentieth century, and models suggest the trend is likely to continue.

Missfeldt, Fanny and Erik Haites. 2001. "The potential contribution of sinks to meeting Kyoto Protocol commitments." Environmental Science and Policy 4(6): 269 - 292. Analyzes the potential contribution of sink enhancement activities to meeting commitments of industrialized countries in the Koto Protocol.

Moore, N. & Rojstaczer, S.2001. "Irrigation-induced rainfall and the Great Plains." Journal of Applied Meteorology 40: 1297-1309 (2001). Heavy irrigation in Texas is shifting normal rainfall patterns.

Moulin, C., et al. 1997. "Control of Atmospheric Export of Dust from North Africa by the North Atlantic Oscillation." Nature 386: 691. A report on transport of dust from North Africa across the ocean to North America.

National Assessment Synthesis Team, U. S. Global Change Research Program. 2000. Climate Change Impacts on the United States. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Interesting projections of the impacts of global climate change.

Nemitz, E., Hargreaves, et al. 2002. "Micrometeorological measurements of the urban heat budget and CO₂ emissions on a city scale." Environmental Science and Technology, published online doi:10.1021/es010277e (2002). Cars and home heating account for most urban CO₂.

O'Dowd, Colin D., et al. 2002. "Marine aerosol formation from biogenic iodine emissions." Nature 417: 632-636 (6 June 2002). Dimethyl sulphide (DMS) released by marine phytoplankton has been thought to be the main source of cloud-forming aerosols, but iodine, also emitted by marine organisms may also play a role in global cooling.

O'Meara, Molly. 1997. "The Risks, and How We Will Manage Them." World Watch Journal 10(6): 10-24. A preview of the 1997 International meeting on global climate change in Kyoto, Japan.

Obasi, G.O.P. 1998. "The atmosphere: global commons to protect." Our Planet 7(5): 5-8. Describes the risks from climate change and ozone depletion, and how the World Meteorological Organization addresses the protection of the atmosphere.

Oren, R., et al. "Soil fertility limits carbon sequestration by forest ecosystems in a CO₂-enriched atmosphere." Nature 411: 469-472 (2001). Evidence that forests may not act as sinks for excess atmospheric carbon.

Ou, H.W. 2001. "Possible bounds on the Earth's surface temperature: from the perspective of a conceptual global-mean model." Journal of Climate 14: 2976-2988, (2001). The Earth's climate may depend less on the Sun than we might think.

Palmer, T. N. & J. Räisänen. 2002. "Quantifying the risk of extreme seasonal precipitation events in a changing climate." Nature 415: 512-514 (31 January 2002). Models suggest a fivefold increase in excessive rainfall, over parts of the British Isles over the next 100 years and similar increases for the Asian monsoon region--with serious implications for flood-prone areas in Bangladesh.

Paterson, W. S. B & Niels Reeh. 2001 "Thinning of the ice sheet in northwest Greenland over the past forty years." Nature 414: 60-62 (1 November 2001). The northwest part of the Greenland ice sheet is thinning more rapidly than previously suspected.

Pearson, P. N., et al. 2001. "Warm tropical sea surface temperatures in the Late Cretaceous and Eocene epochs." Nature 413: 481-487 (4 October 2001). A paradox in palaeoclimatology has been the apparent existence of a cool sea surface in the tropics under conditions of high CO₂ in the atmosphere. New evidence suggests that the tropics were warmer during glacial periods than previously thought.

Peterson, T.C., et al. 1999. "Global Rural Temperature Trends." Geophysical Research Letters 26: 329-332. Rural measurements show global warming more accurately than urban stations.

Peterson, A.T., et al. 2002. "Future projections for Mexican faunas under global climate change scenarios." Nature 416: 626-629 (2002). Computer models suggest that climate change will rearrange wildlife and that many areas may have radically different inhabitants within 50 years.

Picaut, J., et al. 1996. "Mechanism of the Zonal Displacements of the Pacific Warm Pool: Implications for ENSO." Science 274(5292): 1486-1489. What forcing factors drive El Niño?

Potter, C., et al. 2001. "Biomass burning losses of carbon estimated from ecosystem modeling and satellite data analysis for the Brazilian Amazon region." Atmospheric Environment 35 (10): 1773-1781.

Prokopenko, Alexander A., et al. 2002. "Muted climate variations in continental Siberia during the mid-Pleistocene epoch." Nature 418: 65-68 (2002). The sediment record from Lake Baikal suggests that the climate change between glacial and interglacial 480,000 to 380,000 years ago was milder than the more recent glacial-interglacial transition of 100,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Reay, D.2001. "New directions: my own private Kyoto." Atmospheric Environment 35: 4887-4888 (2001). Individual actions can help reduce global warming.

Reich, Peter B., et al. 2001. "Plant diversity enhances ecosystem responses to elevated CO₂ and nitrogen deposition." Nature 410: 809-810. In grassland field experiments, plots with greater plant diversity had greater biomass accumulation in response to nitrogen fertilization and doubled CO₂ levels than plots with fewer species.

Richey, J. E., et al. 2002. "Outgassing from Amazonian rivers and wetlands as a large tropical source of atmospheric CO₂." Nature 416: 617-620 (2002). The rivers and wetlands of South America's Amazon rainforest breathe out as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year as the dry regions of the forest absorb.

Rodhe, H., et al. 1997. "Svante Arrhenius and the Greenhouse Effect." Ambio 26(1): 1-4. The lead article in a special issue commemorating the 100-year anniversary of the publication of Svante Arrhenius' landmark paper on the greenhouse effect.

Roig, Fidel A., et al. 2001. "Climate variability 50,000 years ago in mid-latitude Chile reconstructed from tree rings." Nature 410 (6828): 567-570. A tree ring chronology for a 1,229 year period developed from fossil stumps of Fitzroya cupressoides buried in coastal sediments shows that the climate 50,000 years ago was not dissimilar from today.

Romm, Joseph. J. 1999. Cool Companies: How the Best businesses Boost Profits and Productivity by Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Covelo, CA: Island Press. Examples of companies that save money and increase productivity by reducing greenhouse gases.

Sagarin, R. & F. Micheli. 2001. "Climate Change in Nontraditional Data Sets." Science 294: 811 (2001). Amateur observations of seasonal changes are helpful in documenting climate changes.

Schimel, D. S., et al. "Recent patterns and mechanisms of carbon exchange by terrestrial ecosystems." Nature 414: 169-172 (8 November 2001). A new synthesis of recent information on continental and global patterns of terrestrial ecosystem carbon exchange confirms that the terrestrial biosphere was a carbon sink in the 1990s.

Schlesinger, W. & J. Lichter. "Limited carbon storage in soil and litter of experimental forest plots under increased atmospheric CO₂." Nature 411: 466-469 (2001). Evidence that forests may not act as sinks for excess atmospheric carbon.

Schneider, David. 1997. "The Rising Seas." Scientific American 276(3): 112-117. What is the likelihood that rapid movement of Antarctic ice sheets will cause catastrophic sea-level rises?

Schneider, Stephen, et al. (eds) 2002. Climate Change Policy: A Survey. Island Press. A group of distinguished scientists analyze climate science and policy.

Sparks, T., Roy, D. & C. Mason. 2000. Essex Naturalist 17: 31-37 (2000). Amateur records show that many natural events now occur earlier across much of the northern hemisphere than they did 20 years ago.

Steiger, S. M., R.E. Orville & G. Huffines. "Cloud-to-Ground lightning characteristics over Houston, Texas: 1989-2000." Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, 107, Published online doi:10.1029/2001JD001142 (2002). Hot, dirty air over big cities triggers lightning.

Stott, Peter A., et al. 2000. "External Control of 20^th Century Temperature: Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings." Science 290: 2133-2137. A comparison of two major climate models shows that humans are playing a significant role in global warming.

Stott, L., et al. 2002. "Super ENSO and global climate oscillations at millennial time scales." Science 297: 222-226 (2002). During past ice ages, the tropical Pacific Ocean behaved rather as it does today in an El Niño event.

The Social Learning Group. 2001. Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks: Volume 1, A Comparative History of Social Responses to Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, and Acid Rain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. A look at how ideas, interests, and institutions affect environmental management.

Travis, D. J., A.M. Carleton, & R.G. Lauritsen. 2002. "Contrails reduce daily temperature range." Nature 418: 601 (2002). The 2001 air-traffic moratorium opened window on contrails and climate.

Upgren, Artur and Jurgen Stock. 2001. Weather: How It Works and Why It Matters. Freeman. A popular description of weather and climate.

Watson, Robert T., et al., eds. 1997. The Regional Impacts of Climate Change: An Assessment of Vulnerability. London: Cambridge University Press. This is the summary document of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group on the risks of global warming.

Zwiers, F. W. and A. J. Weaver. 2000. "The Causes of 20^th Century Warming." Science 290: 2081-2083. Considers evidence that humans are playing a significant role in global warming.