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Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change (2000)

Chapter: Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members." National Research Council. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9755.
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Appendix A—
Biographical Information on Panel Members

John M. Wallace (Chair) is professor of atmospheric sciences and co-director of the University of Washington Program on the Environment. From 1981–98 he served as director of the (University of Washington/NOAA) Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean. His research specialties include the study of atmospheric general circulation, El Niño, and global climate. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences; a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the American Meteorological Society (AMS); and a recipient of the Rossby medal (AMS) and Revelle medal (AGU).

John R. Christy is professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He specializes in satellite microwave data in evaluating global climate change. He has appeared as an expert at congressional hearings and is a member of NASA's Global Hydrology and Climate Center which focuses on climate research. He was recently named by the American Meteorological Society to receive a special award, jointly with Dr. Roy W. Spencer of the Marshall Space Flight Center, for developing a global, precise record of earth's temperature from operational polar-orbiting satellites which is regarded as having advanced scientists' ability to monitor climate. Data from the Spencer-Christy research project is used in both national and international policy analyses relating to global climate change and for validating climate models.break

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members." National Research Council. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9755.
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Page 82

Dian Gaffen leads the climate variability and trends group at the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her recent research focuses on observational studies of atmospheric temperature and water vapor changes, climate extremes, and meteorological data quality. She is a member of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union and a recipient of both the Prof. Dr. Vilho Vaisala Award from the World Meteorological Organization and the NOAA Administrator's Award.

Norman C. Grody is affiliated with NOAA NESDIS (National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service) where he has developed techniques to retrieve atmospheric parameters (e.g., temperature, water vapor, rainfall) and identify surface features (e.g., snowcover, sea ice, flooding) using satellite-based microwave radiometers. He has received the U.S. Department of Commerce Bronze and Silver Medal Awards for the development of operational products from the SSM/I and AMSU instruments, respectively.

James E. Hansen is head of the NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His research interests include radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres, interpretation of remote sounding of planetary atmospheres, development of simplified climate models and three-dimensional global climate models, current climate trends from observational data, and projections of man's impact on climate. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

David E. Parker is with the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at The Meteorological Office in the United Kingdom. Since 1979 his work has focused on climatic variability and change and on near-real-time monitoring of climatic variations. He has contributed to the development of global historical data bases for sea surface temperature and sea ice, as well as marine air temperature, mean sea level pressure, and radiosonde-based air temperatures with a view to the detection and attribution of climate changes and the forcing and verification of climate model simulations. He is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society; a contributor to the 1990, 1992, 1995, and current IPCC Assessments; and a recipient of the Fitzroy Prize of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Thomas C. Peterson is chief of the Scientific Services Division at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center. His expertise lies in assessing surface data and surface climate variability and change, including analyses of various temperature characteristics. He is a WMO CCI rapporteur on statistical methods for climatology and serves as chair of the Joint WMO CCI/CLIVAR Working Group on Climate Change Detection. He has received the U.S. Department ofcontinue

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members." National Research Council. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9755.
×

Page 83

Commerce Bronze Medal Award ''for developing revolutionary new climatological baseline data sets and statistical techniques that reveal accurate long-term climatic trends." He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

Benjamin D. Santer is a physicist/atmospheric scientist at the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research interests include identifying human effects on climate and evaluating the performance of global climate models. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the 1998 Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award from the World Meteorological Organization, and the 1997 NOAA/Environmental Research Laboratories "Outstanding Scientific Paper" award.

Roy W. Spencer is Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. His research has focused on satellite information retrieval techniques, passive microwave remote sensing, satellite precipitation retrieval, global temperature monitoring, space sensor definition, and satellite meteorology. He is a recipient of NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal and a co-recipient, along with Dr. John Christy, of the American Meteorological Society's Special Award for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer is the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer that will fly on NASA's Aqua spacecraft in 2000. He is a member of the American Meteorological Society.

Kevin Trenberth is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). His main scientific interests are in global climate variability and its effects, including El Niño and global climate change, and being from New Zealand, Southern Hemisphere meteorology. He is currently a member of the NRC's Committee on Global Change Research, the NOAA Advisory Panel on Climate and Global Change and Council on Longterm Monitoring, the Joint Scientific Committee of the WCRP, the National Science Foundation's Climate System Modeling Advisory Board, and the ECMWF Reanalysis Project Advisory Group. He is co-chair of the International Scientific Steering Group (SSG) for the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Programme and chair of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies Scientific Advisory Committee. He has also been prominent in the IPCC Scientific Assessment activities. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Royal Society.break

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members." National Research Council. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9755.
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Page 84

Frank J. Wentz established and currently serves as director of Remote Sensing Systems, a research company specializing in satellite microwave remote sensing of the earth. His research focuses on radiative transfer models that relate satellite observations to geophysical parameters, with the objective of providing reliable geophysical data sets to the earth science community. He is currently working on satellite-derived decadal time series of atmospheric moisture and temperature, the measurement of sea-surface temperature through clouds, and advanced microwave sensor designs for climatological studies. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union.break

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members." National Research Council. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9755.
×
Page 81
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members." National Research Council. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9755.
×
Page 82
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members." National Research Council. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9755.
×
Page 83
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Information on Panel Members." National Research Council. 2000. Reconciling Observations of Global Temperature Change. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9755.
×
Page 84
Next: Appendix B: Acronyms and Abbreviations »
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An overall increase in global-mean atmospheric temperatures is predicted to occur in response to human-induced increases in atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases." The most prominent of these gases, carbon dioxide, has increased in concentration by over 30% during the past 200 years, and is expected to continue to increase well into the future. Other changes in atmospheric composition complicate the picture. In particular, increases in the number of small particles (called aerosols) in the atmosphere regionally offset and mask the greenhouse effect, and stratospheric ozone depletion contributes to cooling of the upper troposphere and stratosphere.

Many in the scientific community believe that a distinctive greenhouse-warming signature is evident in surface temperature data for the past few decades. Some, however, are puzzled by the fact that satellite temperature measurements indicate little, if any, warming of the lower to mid-troposphere (the layer extending from the surface up to about 8 km) since such satellite observations first became operational in 1979. The satellite measurements appear to be substantiated by independent trend estimates for this period based on radiosonde data. Some have interpreted this apparent discrepancy between surface and upper air observations as casting doubt on the overall reliability of the surface temperature record, whereas others have concluded that the satellite data (or the algorithms that are being used to convert them into temperatures) must be erroneous. It is also conceivable that temperatures at the earth's surface and aloft have not tracked each other perfectly because they have responded differently to natural and/or human-induced climate forcing during this particular 20-year period. Whether these differing temperature trends can be reconciled has implications for assessing:

  • how much the earth has warmed during the past few decades,
  • whether observed changes are in accord with the predicted response to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere based on model simulations, and
  • whether the existing atmospheric observing system is adequate for the purposes of monitoring global-mean temperature.

This report reassesses the apparent differences between the temperature changes recorded by satellites and the surface thermometer network on the basis of the latest available information. It also offers an informed opinion as to how the different temperature records should be interpreted, and recommends actions designed to reduce the remaining uncertainties in these measurements.

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