Around 4000 years ago the advanced urban civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and India suddenly collapsed. What happened? Did a prolonged drought cause the breakdown of social order? Recent discoveries from all over the world strongly support the suspected link of the collapse with climate. The volume presents the findings of more than 40 researchers and provides a review on the relevant information. It appears that a major shift of the precipitation pattern affected many parts of the world at approximately the same time, with disastrous effects on the nomadic populations of Asia, Africa and...

The objective of this NATO Advanced Research Workshop was to discuss our current understanding of the role of clouds in climate and chemistry. The range of topics dis cussed during the workshop included: modeling of clouds in GCMs; observations of the cloud micro physical properties; the water vapor cycle; troposphere-stratosphere exchange; role of in-cloud transport in tropospheric ozone; regulation of current and paleo climate by clouds; and anthropogenic sulfate aerosols and modification of cloud properties. The essence of the discussions is captured in the accompanying summary by the...

Current climate models diverge in their assessment of global warming that will result from the anthropogenic increase in trace gases. This is because they differ in their representation of the hydrological cycle (water vapour, clouds, snow and sea ice, soil moisture) and because a direct validation in terms of sensitivity is not possible. Indirect methods and approaches are therefore necessary to verify the models efficiently. The book provides an overview on different validation approaches. The use of satellite data is particularly stressed.

The book addresses the threat of climate change to world food security, by providing an authoritative review of climate change and surprise, contrasting trends in world food security, case studies of food and the environment, and chapters on adaptive responses. It reviews: trends in agriculture and food security - projections of the incidence and distribution of hunger over the next few decades; the risk and global impacts of climate change on agricultural systems, relying on alternative models of world agricultural potential that have simulated the impacts of climate change; vulnerability...

Soil organic matter (SOM) represents a major pool of carbon within the biosphere, roughly twice than in atmospheric CO2. SOM models embody our best understanding of soil carbon dynamics and are needed to predict how global environmental change will influence soil carbon stocks. These models are also required for evaluating the likely effectiveness of different mitigation options. The first important step towards systematically evaluating the suitability of SOM models for these purposes is to test their simulations against real data. Since changes in SOM occur slowly, long-term datasets are...

This book presents a state-of-the-art analysis of the microbiology of the trace gases that affect climate and environmental quality. The microbiological sources and sinks of methane, nitrogen oxides, sulfur gases, halocarbons and other trace gases are reviewed and current work described. Techniques for the detection and analysis of gases and the bacteria that produce and metabolize them are presented. The book is a compilation of chapters prepared by leading authorities in their fields, covering the whole range of trace gas microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics. The...

Polar ice cores have provided tremendous advances in our knowledge of past climate change. They also contain an archive of geochemical data, which can certainly delineate some of the forcing factors that govern climate change. However, our ability to interpret these data is severely curtailed by lack of knowledge of the processes governing the transfer of chemical species from the air to the snow. This book outlines the potential and problems of ice core chemistry and discusses the processes involved in air-snow transfer. It gives the state of current knowledge and an agenda for future...

The Advanced Study Institute Ice Physics in the Natural and Endangered Environ ment was held at Acquafredda di Maratea, Italy, from September 7 to 19, 1997. The ASI was designed to study the broad range of ice science and technology, and it brought together an appropriately interdisciplinary group of lecturers and students to study the many facets of the subject. The talks and poster presentations explored how basic molecular physics of ice have important environmental consequences, and, con versely, how natural phenomena present new questions for fundamental study. The of lectures discusses...

The subject of this volume is the observation and modelling of the gravity wave field in the atmosphere. The focus is on the question of how to include the effects of small-scale gravity waves in sophisticated global climate models.
The book comprises 26 chapters, including contributions from distinguished experts in observation and theory, along with results from studies of gravity wave parameterization within comprehensive climate models.

An increasing allllo /allce because of the anthropogenically induced ozone depletion and relevant illcrca5e of the surface ultraviolet (UV) radiation (including erythemal part of the UV spectrum) has resulted in the growth of interest to total ozone (TOZ) surface and satellite observations, surface UV measurements (with an emphasis on UV -B) and. the interpretation of observation results to assess potential impacts of the UV radiation enhancement on man and biosphere. The significance of this phenomenon is diJIcrent in various cowltries. Special attention has been paid, for instance, to ozone...