Recent Rapid Regional Climate Warming on the Antarctic Peninsula

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that mean global warming was 0.6 ± 0.2 °C during the 20th century and cited anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases as the likely cause of temperature rise in the last 50 years. But this mean value conceals the substantial complexity of observed climate change, which is seasonally- and diurnally-biased, decadally-variable and geographically patchy. In particular, over the last 50 years three high-latitude areas have undergone recent rapid regional (RRR) warming, which was substantially more rapid than the global mean. However, each RRR warming occupies a different climatic regime and may have an entirely different underlying cause. We discuss the significance of RRR warming in one area, the Antarctic Peninsula. Here warming was much more rapid than in the rest of Antarctica where it was not significantly different to the global mean. We highlight climate proxies that appear to show that RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula is unprecedented over the last two millennia, and so unlikely to be a natural mode of variability. So while the station records do not indicate a ubiquitous polar amplification of global warming, the RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula might be a regional amplification of such warming. This, however, remains unproven since we cannot yet be sure what mechanism leads to such an amplification. We discuss several possible candidate mechanisms: changing oceanographic or changing atmospheric circulation, or a regional air-sea-ice feedback amplifying greenhouse warming. We can show that atmospheric warming and reduction in sea-ice duration coincide in a small area on the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, but here we cannot yet distinguish cause and effect. Thus for the present we cannot determine which process is the probable cause of RRR warming on the Antarctic Peninsula and until the mechanism initiating and sustaining the RRR warming is understood, and is convincingly reproduced in climate models, we lack a sound basis for predicting climate change in this region over the coming century.     

Water Resources Planning and Climate Change Assessment Methods

This paper, which provides background for other papers in the volume, first reviews the nature and development of water resources planning and evaluation criteria at the Federal level in the United States. These criteria constitute a highly developed, complex set of guidelines for project planning and evaluation. The level of development of these criteria and their long historical development from theoretical foundations must be taken into account in relating global climate change to possible changes in planning criteria. Second, the essentials of water project planning and evaluation, including benefit-cost principles and more complex concepts of social decision-making, are outlined. Third, the paper provides an overview of global climate change assessment methods, including impact assessment and integrated assessment. Impact assessment uses a relatively straightforward comparison of with and without situations; integrated assessment attempts to improve on impact assessment by developing more complex models that incorporate a range of feedbacks and interrelationships.     

Timing and Extent of Late Quaternary Paleolakes in the Trans-Pecos Closed Basin, West Texas and South-Central New Mexico

The Trans-Pecos Closed Basin is a hydrographically closed region covering 20,000 km²centered on Salt Basin, 160 km east of El Paso, Texas. Geomorphic and limnetic evidence have been used to identify four major highstands for Lake King during the last glacial maximum (LGM). Additional geomorphic features from a second, recently identified, paleolake, Lake Sacramento, have been found in the Beargrass subbasin, a nested subbasin approximately 75 km northwest of Salt Basin. Radiocarbon ages of the organic material in Lake King sediments date four abrupt climate changes and rapid lacustrine transgressions during the LGM with a quasi-periodicity of 2000 yr. Geomorphic evidence in the Beargrass subbasin identifies lake cycles contemporaneous with those in Lake King. The dates for these transgressions correlate with the dates of freshening events identified by researchers in paleolake basins elsewhere in New Mexico. The quasi-periodicity of the events approximates that of Dansgaard–Oeschger events identified from Greenland ice cores. The contemporaneity of the Trans-Pecos transgressions with transgressive events in other basins in the region suggests that paleolakes in the region were in phase with respect to abrupt climate changes during the latter stages of the LGM.     

The mechanisms of shallow earthquakes and the monitoring of a comprehensive test ban

The ability of seismological criteria to identify earthquakes from underground explosions depends partly on the orientation of the earthquake source. Well-determined double-couple moment tensor solutions for a large number of earthquakes have been published in the Harvard centroid moment tensor (CMT) and United Slates Geological Survey (USGS) catalogues. Statistical analyses of these catalogues indicate that the distribution of the orientation of earthquake mechanisms is not random. The distribution of the T axes shows significant clustering around the downward vertical, indicating that a larger number of earthquake mechanisms radiate compressional P -wave energy to teleseismic distances from near the maximum of the radiation pattern than is predicted if earthquake sources are randomly oriented double couples. The clustered T axes correspond to compressional dip-slip mechanisms, and it is this type of mechanism which is believed to cause both the m _b: M _s (the ratio of body-wave to surface-wave magnitude) and first-motion criteria to misidentify an earthquake as an explosion.     

The Influence of Geomorphologic Heritage on Present Nival Erosion: Peñalara, Spain

This article examines how snow plays a role in current erosive processes in a high mountain area (1800—2400 m a.s.l.) known as Peñalara, located in Spain's Central Range (40°50' N; 3°58' W). The hypothesis maintains that snow becomes an important erosive factor when it accumulates over sedimentary or weathered materials, therefore geomorphological heritage is a key factor in nival erosion. To test this hypothesis, the authors identified the landforms in the study area and determined their relative ages by weathering and lichenometry ( Rizocarpon geographicum ag. ), differentiating between preglacial, glacial (Recent Pleistocene) and postglacial (Holocene) forms. The information was used to plot a reticulate pattern of observation sites for the study area. Snow depth and the movement of selected blocks at each site were recorded from October 1991 to June 1995. The relationship between late-lying snowpatches, geomorphological heritage and current erosive processes was determined. Between 1800 and 2000 m a.s.l., there is an indirect relationship between snowpatches and predominant processes (stream incision and gelifluction) on terminal moraines. Between 2000 and 2200 m, direct action is present where there are late-laying snowpatches on lateral moraines and some glacial steps. Between 2200 and 2400 m, gelifraction and gravity processes are also in direct relation to snowpatches.     

Science and the desertification debate

Desertification is an environmental issue that has major environmental and social dimensions, and which has been controversial in a number of respects. The recent UN Convention on Desertification and Drought places considerable emphasis on the social dimensions of the problem and the role local peoples and NGOs have to play in tackling it. When desertification first became regarded as a major issue in the 1970s, science was seen to have a major role in understanding and solving the problem, but in some circles has been regarded as failing to contribute usefully. This paper explores the nature of scientific contributions, why science may have been seen to fail to serve the needs of policy-makers, and why scientific findings may have been misinterpreted in broader circles dealing with the issue. It concludes by identifying areas where science has still a valuable role to play in an issue that is now perhaps regarded as more political and social than scientific.     

Estimating Climate-Change Impacts on Colorado Plateau Snowpack Using Downscaling Methods

This study develops observed climate-based downscaling transfer functions that are used with general circulation model (GCM) output to assess potential global-change impacts on Upper Colorado Plateau, USA, water resources. Daily automated snow water equivalent stations are used with 700 mb atmospheric circulation to determine empirical transfer functions. Downscaling methodologies using multiple regression and neural networks are evaluated, with the neural network results explaining approximately 70%of the daily snowfall variance. The neural network-based transfer functions are used with the GENESIS GCM to simulate snowfall characteristics in both a 1xCO₂ and a 2xCO₂ climate. While the total precipitation simulated by the 2xCO₂ analysis remains nearly the same as today, less will fall as snow; specifically, snow water equivalence shows significant reduction (except in the Green River Basin) as the snow season is reduced by 58 days on average.