Scientists Begin Study of Future of Planet Earth
A collection of federal agencies is beginning a decade-long, multimillion-dollar investigation into changes faced by Planet Earth.
“Evidence is increasing on the scientific table that change is occurring,” said Bob Corell of the National Science Foundation, adding that both natural and human-induced changes could have a broad impact on the future.
A host of agencies have joined in the 2-year-old federal Committee on Earth Science to set up the research “to monitor, understand and, ultimately, predict global change,” said Robert Post of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“Global change is a large, complex scientific problem and it still is not largely understood,” committee Chairman Dallas Peck, head of the U.S. Geological Survey, said at a news conference.
Common Purpose
“There is a shared, common purpose--to understand global change,” said NASA’s Dixon Butler.
Peck described the coming fiscal year as largely a planning period to be used in setting up research programs likely to last a decade or more.
The atmosphere and the role of clouds received top priority, with Michael Hall of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explaining that clouds are a major factor in the feared rise in global temperatures. Their effect is not well understood, he said.
The widely discussed threat of global warming, however, is only part of the overall research effort that includes studies of threats to the earth’s protective ozone layer, possible changes in the oceans and atmosphere, air pollution and acid rain.
The most attention has been paid recently to the reports of warmer temperatures, with some scientists concerned that the carbon dioxide and other gases added to the atmosphere by human activities will increase temperatures and cause disruptive climate change.
This so-called greenhouse effect is disputed by other scientists, however, and evidence is lacking on both sides. That is an area the researchers hope to tackle early.
Funds totaling $191.5 million for fiscal 1990 are included in the budgets of various government departments to get the program under way.
The seven major areas of research set forth in the committee plan are:
* Climate and hydrologic systems. The role of clouds is the first item on the agenda, followed by research in ocean circulation, links between the air, land and water and their interactions.
* Biogeochemical dynamics, such things as the relationship between living organisms and the water and atmosphere. For example, trees take carbon dioxide out of the air and replace it with oxygen, and cutting down trees will reduce that activity.
* Ecological systems and dynamics, which covers how people, plants and animals would react to climate change and how their reactions might in turn affect other processes.
* Earth system history will look into what has happened to the land, air and water when climate has changed in the past.
* Human interactions will examine population growth and development, energy and land use and industrial production and how those activities affect the earth.
* Solid earth research will include research on coastal erosion, volcanoes and their effect on climate, permafrost, the sea floor and other areas.
* Solar influences studies will include monitoring the incoming radiation from the sun, the amount reflected into space and how that energy affects the earth and its climate.
In addition to the Geological Survey, Science Foundation, Office of Technology Policy, NASA and NOAA, other agencies participating in the program are the State Department, Environmental Protection Agency, the Council on Environmental Quality and the departments of transportation, agriculture and defense.
