Special Session at the Fall Meeting 2003 of the AGU:
Rates of Change in the Earth System
8-12 December 2003
Moscone Center West
San Francisco, California
For more information about the AGU Fall Meeting see:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm03/index.shtml
Deadline for electronic online abstract submissions:
4 September 2003, 1400 UT
GC02 Rates of Change in the Earth System
Much of paleoenvironmental research has focused on (quasi-) equilibrium
climate states of the past, such as the Eemian (roughly between 140,000
and 117,000 years before present) or the Last Glacial Maximum (21,000
years before present). Here the terms "climate state" and "climate
system" include the whole Earth system as inferred by climatologists,
geologists, and ecologists, among others. By making comparisons with the
present-day climate state, we have been able to infer the magnitude of
climate-sensitivity parameters. However, only nonequilibrium or
transient climate states, such as the last deglaciation, allow us to
assess the magnitude of the inertia in the Earth system. Areas of
interest include, but are not limited to, forcing factors (greenhouse
gas concentrations), climatic variables (temperature, hydrological
balance, glacier mass balance, sea level), and the biosphere
(biodiversity, alpine timberline, land cover change). Estimates of past
rates of change can provide us with a long-term perspective on recent
changes and help us to appreciate their magnitude. Furthermore, they
give us a taste of how rapid climate change may operate in the future.
State-of-the-art Earth system models require a variety of field-based
estimates for the inertia of the climate system in order to make
reliable predictions for the future. Modeling and/or field-based
submissions to this session should specifically address how fast some
aspect of the Earth system changed in the past and compare this rate
with available estimates of modern and/or future change.
Conveners :
Keith Alverson, PAGES International Project Office, Bärenplatz 2, Bern,
3011 CHE, Tel: 41 31 312 3133, Fax: 41 31 312 3168, email:
alverson [at] pages.unibe.ch
Julie Brigham-Grette, University of Massachusetts, Morrill Science
Center, Amherst, MA 01003 USA, Tel: 413 5454840, Fax: 413 545 1200,
email: juliebg [at] geo.umass.edu
Thomas Stocker, University of Bern, Climate and Environmental Physics
Sidlerstrasse 5, Bern, 3012 CHE, Tel: 41 31 631 4464, Fax: 41 31 631
8742, email: stocker [at] climate.unibe.ch