HR: 14:45h
AN: U23D-01 INVITED [Abstracts]
TI: Is There Still Time to Avoid `Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference' with Global Climate? The Importance
of the Work of Charles David Keeling
AU: * Hansen, J
EM: jhansen@giss.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025
United States
AB:
David Keeling altered our perspectives about global change with his painstaking observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The now famous `Keeling curve', measuring both the pulse of Nature and a steadily rising human impact on atmospheric
composition, has invariably been hailed as our most rigorous and fundamental measure of global change. Carbon dioxide has
been joined by other key metrics that help define the causes and consequences of global climate change. The Earth's history
provides our best indication of the levels of change that are likely to have deleterious effects on humans and wildlife.
This discussion of climate metrics will present up-to-date measures of the agents of global change and climate change itself,
including steps to minimize and assess measurement biases. The metrics are beginning to paint an increasingly clear picture
of humanity's prospects for avoiding `dangerous anthropogenic interference' with global climate.
DE: 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
DE: 0399 General or miscellaneous
DE: 0429 Climate dynamics (1620)
DE: 0466 Modeling
SC: Union [U]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005