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From page 1... ...
A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale, because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century. It is not primarily the advance of a major ice sheet over our farms and cities that we must fear, devastating as this would be, for such changes take thousands of years to evolve.
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From page 2... ...
This knowledge will permit a rational response to climatic variations, including the systematic assessment beforehand of man-made influences upon the climate and will make possible an orderly economic and social adjustment to changes in climate. LIMITS OF OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE Although we have considerable knowledge of the broad characteristics of climate, we have relatively little knowledge of the major processes of climatic change.
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From page 3... ...
The present international network of conventional meteorological observations has grown largely in response to the need for weather forecasts, while most oceanographic data have been collected from ships widely separated in space and time. For the proposed research program, these data must be supplemented by truly global observations of the large-scale geophysical boundary conditions and of the physical processes that are important in climatic change.
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From page 4... ...
This question is closely tied to the limited predictability of the weather itself and to the predictability of the various external boundary conditions and internal transfer processes that characterize the climatic system. Although there is evidence of regularity on some time scales, the climatic record includes many seemingly irregular variations of large amplitude.
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From page 5... ...
The principal approaches to the problem that are available to us are shown in Figure 1.1, and we recognize the importance of maintaining a balance of effort among them. These same approaches form the elements of the climatic research program recommended in this report and broadly cover what we believe to be the needed efforts for observation, analysis, modeling, and theory.
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From page 6... ...
The Question of Priorities The various components of the recommended climatic research program (fully described in Chapter 6) are to a great extent interdependent: data are needed to check the coupled general circulation models and to calibrate the simpler models; the models are needed to test hypotheses and to project future climates; monitoring is needed to check the projections; and all are needed to assess the consequences.
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From page 7... ...
PURPOSES AND CONTENTS OF THIS REPORT Broadly speaking, the purposes of this report are twofold: first, to advise the United States Government through the National Research Council's United States Committee for GARP on the urgent need for a coherent national research program on the problem of climatic variation; and, second, to advise on the steps necessary to address the same problem in the international scene. As noted previously, our response to the Government is the recommendation of a broadly based National Climatic Research Program (NCRP)
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From page 8... ...
and a brief comparative review of the ability of present atmospheric and oceanic general circulation models to simulate selected climatic variables (Appendix B)
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