Technology Causing Little Understood Changes in Weather

Technological advances are changing global weather in ways scientists do not understand and cannot predict, researchers told a meeting of the American Meteorological Society on Monday.

“Human activity has begun to affect the planet, producing global changes,” said John Dutton, head of Penn State University’s department of meteorology. “What we’re trying to do here is discover how the planet works, in order to avoid having an inadvertent experiment with the planet’s future.”

Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, levels of several atmospheric gasses such as methane and carbon dioxide have increased dramatically. Carbon dioxide levels have doubled since 1955, largely as a result of the burning of fossil fuel, researchers said.

Helped Insulate Earth

Those gases have helped insulate the Earth to produce an increase of 2 to 4 degrees in the planet’s temperature, a process known as the greenhouse effect.

Levels of dimethyl sulfide, which plays a role in cloud formation, also has risen steadily and could increase the Earth’s cloud cover, said Ralph Cicerone, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Scientists at the weeklong meeting called for a merging of the various Earth sciences, including meteorology, oceanography, biology and ecology, an interaction they said has traditionally been absent.