Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-09T23:19:40.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Simulating Past and Forecasting Future Climates*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Reid A. Bryson
Reid A. Bryson
Affiliation:
Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin, 1225 West Dayton Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Climatic change is not a new phenomenon, nor is it random, as most of the variation can be explained in terms of variations in the sunlight reaching the surface of the Earth. The solar energy reaching the surface is modified by the aerosols in the atmosphere, however, and that means primarily aerosols of volcanic origin.

The climatic history of the Earth is divided up into episodes with abrupt beginnings and ends. Rapid changes from one climatic state to another are normal. The fluctuations within this century do not appear to be unusual in any respect.

To the Author's knowledge there is no evidence that past climatic changes, including those of the last decades, are related to changes in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—except perhaps for warmer nights in the North American mid-west. It is not possible to simulate past climates using carbon dioxide content as the main variable, but it is possible to do so using calculated solar radiation as modified by volcanic aerosols. This strongly suggests that forecasts of the climatic future based on carbon dioxide increases are suspect.

Computerized models of the climate that can simulate decadal and century-long variations of climate as well as variations on the millennium scale, suggest that the climate will not warm dramatically in the next fifty years, but will, rather soon after that, begin a rather rapid change towards the next glacial climate.

Changes in our global array of cultures, sufficient to affect the global climate in a way which we perceive as beneficial, probably are not possible within centuries without massive physical conflict. There are both winners and losers when the climate changes in a non-uniform pattern, as it always does. It is a well-known fact that a global change of 0.5°C in mean temperature, such as has happened in recent years, might produce some regions of 10°C change in either direction and some regions with no change at all, and additionally an array of rainfall changes of various magnitudes. Russians would welcome warming of their climate!

The problems with attempting to modify the global climate in a particular direction are enormous and would be incredibly costly. This is compounded by our not knowing what the climate would do without intervention. Only one thing is truly clear, and it is that the present knowledge of the climatic effect of changing carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is totally inadequate as a basis for initiating any global attempt to change the climate.

The indicated action would appear to be to engage in some high-quality climatic research based on sound science before taking global risks greater than those that might arise from the putative ‘global warming’.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , Winter 1993 , pp. 339 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baerreis, D.A. & Bryson, R.A. (Eds) (1967). Climatic change and the Mill Creek Culture of Iowa. Archives of Archaeology, 29, pp. 1–673, illustr.Google Scholar
Bryson, R.A. (1988). Late Quaternary volcanic modulation of Milankovitch Climate Forcing. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 39, pp. 115–25, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryson, R.A. (1989). Modelling the NW India monsoon for the last 4000 years. Climate Dynamics, 3, pp. 169–77, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryson, R.A. (1992). A macrophysical model of the Holocene intertropical convergence and Jetstream positions and rainfall for the Saharan Region. Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, 47, pp. 247–58, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryson, R.A. (MS). Some Regional Aspects of the Neo-Atlantic Climatic Episode.Google Scholar
Bryson, R.A. & Dittberner, G.J. (1976). A non-equilibrium model of hemispheric mean surface temperatures. Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 33(11), pp. 2094–106, illustr.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryson, R.A. & Goodman, B.M. (1986). Milankovitch and global ice volume simulation. Theor. and Appl. Clim., 37, pp. 22–8, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberlin, T.C. (1898). The influence of great epochs of limestone formation upon the constitution of the atmosphere. Jour. Geology, 6, pp. 609–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberlin, T.C. (1899). An attempt to frame a working hypothesis of the cause of glacial periods on an atmospheric basis. Jour. Geology, 7, pp. 545–84, 677–85, & 751–87, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folland, C.K., Parker, D.E. & Kates, F.E. (1984). Worldwide marine temperature fluctuations 1856–1981. Nature (London), 310, pp. 670–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geyh, M.A. & Jakel, D. (1974). Late glacial and Holocene climatic history of the Sahara Desert derived from a statistical assay of 14C dates. Palaeogeogr., Palaeoclimatol., Palaeoecol., 15(3), pp. 205–8, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, J. & Lebedeff, S. (1988). Global surface air temperatures: update through 1987. Geophys. Res. Lett., 15, pp. 323–6, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ilesanmi, Oluwafemi O. (1971). An empirical formulation of an ITD rainfall model for the tropics — a case study of Nigeria. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 10, pp. 882–91, illustr.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imbrie, J., Martinson, D.G., McIntyre, A., Mix, A.C., Morley, J.J., Pisias, N.G., Prell, W.L. & Shackleton, N.J. (1984). The Orbital Theory of Pleistocene Climate; support from a revised chronology of the Marine del ISO Record. Pp. 269–305 in Milankovitch and Climate, Pt. 1, (Eds Berger, A.L. et al. ). D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht-Boston-Lancaster, illustr. [Not available for checking.]Google Scholar
Kalkstein, L.S. (Ed.) (1991). Global Comparisons of Selected GCM Control Runs and Observed Climate Data. US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation, Climate Change Division Report PM-221, Washington, DC, USA: 250 pp., illustr.Google Scholar
Kutzbach, I.E. & Guetter, P.J. (1986). The influence of changing orbital parameters and surface boundary conditions on climate simulations for the past 18,000 years. Jour. Atmos. Sci., 43, pp. 1726–59, illustr. (Note that this is only one of a series of related papers.)2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaFontaine, C.V., Bryson, R.A. & Wendland, W.M. (1990). Airstream regions of North Africa and the Mediterranean. Jour. Climate, 3(3), pp. 366–72, illustr.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McIntosh, S.K. & McIntosh, R.J. (1981). West African prehistory. Amer. Scientist, 69(6), pp. 602–13, illustr.Google Scholar
Parker, D.E. & Folland, C.K. (1991). Worldwide surface temperature trends since the mid-19th century. Pp. 173–93 in Greenhouse-gas Induced Climatic Change: A Critical Appraisal of Simulations and Observations (Ed. Schlesinger, M.E.). Elsevier Developments in Atmospheric Science, Amsterdam: 19, xix + 615 pp., illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rognon, P. (1976). Essai d'interprétation des variations climatiques au Sahara depuis 40,000 ans. Revue de Géographie physique et de Geol. dynamique, XVIII (2–3), pp. 251–82, illustr.Google Scholar
Smagorinsky, J. (1963). General circulation experiments with the primitive equations, I: The basic experiment. Monthly Weather Rev., 91, pp. 99–164, illustr.2.3.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, T. III, & Bryson, R.A. (1972). The Late- and Post-Glacial sequence of climatic events in Wisconsin and East-Central Minnesota; quantitative estimates derived from fossil pollen spectra by multivariate statistical analysis. Quaternary Research, 2, pp. 70–115, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendland, W.M. & Bryson, R.A. (1974). Dating climatic episodes of the Holocene. Quaternary Research, 4, pp. 9–24, illustr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar