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Title: Global situational awareness and early warning of high-consequence climate change.

Abstract

Global monitoring systems that have high spatial and temporal resolution, with long observational baselines, are needed to provide situational awareness of the Earth's climate system. Continuous monitoring is required for early warning of high-consequence climate change and to help anticipate and minimize the threat. Global climate has changed abruptly in the past and will almost certainly do so again, even in the absence of anthropogenic interference. It is possible that the Earth's climate could change dramatically and suddenly within a few years. An unexpected loss of climate stability would be equivalent to the failure of an engineered system on a grand scale, and would affect billions of people by causing agricultural, economic, and environmental collapses that would cascade throughout the world. The probability of such an abrupt change happening in the near future may be small, but it is nonzero. Because the consequences would be catastrophic, we argue that the problem should be treated with science-informed engineering conservatism, which focuses on various ways a system can fail and emphasizes inspection and early detection. Such an approach will require high-fidelity continuous global monitoring, informed by scientific modeling.

Authors:
; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE
OSTI Identifier:
973663
Report Number(s):
SAND2009-4702
TRN: US201007%%186
DOE Contract Number:  
AC04-94AL85000
Resource Type:
Technical Report
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; CLIMATIC CHANGE; DETECTION; MONITORING; PROBABILITY; CLIMATE MODELS; Climate change.; GPS.

Citation Formats

Backus, George A, Carr, Martin J, and Boslough, Mark Bruce Elrick. Global situational awareness and early warning of high-consequence climate change.. United States: N. p., 2009. Web. doi:10.2172/973663.
Backus, George A, Carr, Martin J, & Boslough, Mark Bruce Elrick. Global situational awareness and early warning of high-consequence climate change.. United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/973663
Backus, George A, Carr, Martin J, and Boslough, Mark Bruce Elrick. 2009. "Global situational awareness and early warning of high-consequence climate change.". United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/973663. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/973663.
@article{osti_973663,
title = {Global situational awareness and early warning of high-consequence climate change.},
author = {Backus, George A and Carr, Martin J and Boslough, Mark Bruce Elrick},
abstractNote = {Global monitoring systems that have high spatial and temporal resolution, with long observational baselines, are needed to provide situational awareness of the Earth's climate system. Continuous monitoring is required for early warning of high-consequence climate change and to help anticipate and minimize the threat. Global climate has changed abruptly in the past and will almost certainly do so again, even in the absence of anthropogenic interference. It is possible that the Earth's climate could change dramatically and suddenly within a few years. An unexpected loss of climate stability would be equivalent to the failure of an engineered system on a grand scale, and would affect billions of people by causing agricultural, economic, and environmental collapses that would cascade throughout the world. The probability of such an abrupt change happening in the near future may be small, but it is nonzero. Because the consequences would be catastrophic, we argue that the problem should be treated with science-informed engineering conservatism, which focuses on various ways a system can fail and emphasizes inspection and early detection. Such an approach will require high-fidelity continuous global monitoring, informed by scientific modeling.},
doi = {10.2172/973663},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/973663}, journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2009},
month = {Sat Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2009}
}