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93-794: Research at the GISS emphasizes a broad study of global change , the natural and anthropogenic changes in our environment that affect the habitability of our planet. These effects may occur on greatly differing time scales, from one-time forcings such as volcanic explosions, to seasonal/annual effects such as El Niño , and on up to the millennia of ice ages. The institute's research combines analysis of comprehensive global datasets (derived from surface stations combined with satellite data for sea surface temperatures ) with global models of atmospheric, land surface, and oceanic processes. Study of past climate change on Earth and of other planetary atmospheres provides an additional tool in assessing general understanding of

186-813: A Ph.D. in physics in 1967, all three degrees from the University of Iowa. He participated in the NASA graduate traineeship from 1962 to 1966 and, at the same time, between 1965 and 1966, he was a visiting student at the Institute of Astrophysics at Kyoto University and in the department of astronomy at the University of Tokyo . He then began work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in 1967. After graduate school , Hansen continued his work with radiative transfer models , attempting to understand

279-418: A 2007 paper, Hansen discussed the potential danger of "fast-feedback" effects causing ice sheet disintegration, based on paleoclimate data. George Monbiot reports "The IPCC predicts that sea levels could rise by as much as 59 centimetres (1.94 ft) this century. Hansen's paper argues that the slow melting of ice sheets the panel expects doesn't fit the data. The geological record suggests that ice at

372-678: A better way to manage the environment on a planetary scale, sometimes referred to as managing "Earth's life support system". The United Nations was formed to stop wars and provide a platform for dialogue between countries. It was not created to avoid major environmental catastrophe on regional or global scales. But several international environmental conventions exist under the UN, including the Framework Convention on Climate Change , Montreal Protocol , Convention to Combat Desertification , and Convention on Biological Diversity . Additionally,

465-432: A brief drop in subsequent years. However, a 2001 Hansen report in the journal Science states that global warming continues, and that the increasing temperatures should stimulate discussions on how to slow global warming. The temperature data was updated in 2006 to report that temperatures are now 0.8 °C warmer than a century ago, and concluded that the recent global warming is a real climate change and not an artifact from

558-452: A dangerous effect on climate because it was not understood what 'dangerous' meant, or how humans were actually affecting climate. He described this as a Faustian bargain because atmospheric aerosols had health risks, and should be reduced, but doing so would effectively increase the warming effects from CO 2 . Hansen and coauthors proposed that the global mean temperature was a good tool to diagnose dangerous anthropogenic interference with

651-406: A function of height. They reported that the results from the 1D model are similar to those of the more complex 3D models, and can simulate basic mechanisms and feedbacks. Hansen predicted that temperatures would rise out of the climate noise by the 1990s, much earlier than predicted by other researches. He also predicted that it would be difficult to convince politicians and the public to react. By

744-451: A grid-point resolution as coarse as 1000 kilometers. The first climate prediction computed from a general circulation model that was published by Hansen was in 1988, the same year as his well-known Senate testimony. The second generation of the GISS model was used to estimate the change in mean surface temperature based on a variety of scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions. Hansen concluded that global warming would be evident within

837-467: A growth rate of about 2% in 2008. Societies everywhere are facing unprecedented challenges as a result of rapid global change (including climate change). In such a context there is need for generatively contributing to transformative social learning systems and green skills learning pathways development. Through this focus, the Chair's work contributes enhancing capacity for climate resilient development and

930-434: A larger number of floods. Southern China has had a decrease in temperatures while most of the world has warmed. In a paper with Menon and colleagues, through the use of observations and climate models results, they conclude that the black carbon heats the air, increases convection and precipitation, and leads to larger surface cooling than if the aerosols were sulfates. A year later, Hansen teamed with Makiko Sato to publish

1023-491: A major update to how the temperature was calculated. It incorporated corrections due to the following reasons: time-of-observation bias; station history changes; classification of rural/urban station; the urban adjustment based on satellite measurements of night light intensity, and relying more on rural station than urban. Evidence was found of local urban warming in urban, suburban and small-town records. The anomalously high global temperature in 1998 due to El Niño resulted in

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1116-402: A nonlinear problem … An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway." He concludes that "present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made [greenhouse gases]. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed

1209-575: A planetary scale. Evidence, if more were needed, of the link between social and environmental global change came with the 2008–2009 global financial crisis . The crisis pushed the planet's main economic powerhouses, the United States, Europe and much of Asia into recession. According to the Global Carbon Project , global atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide fell from an annual growth rate of around 3.4% between 2000 and 2008, to

1302-464: A population of seven billion people. These changes to the human sub-system have a direct influence on all components of the Earth system. The chemical composition of the atmosphere has changed significantly. Concentrations of important greenhouse gases , carbon dioxide , methane and nitrous oxide are rising fast. Over Antarctica a large hole in the ozone layer appeared. Fisheries collapsed: most of

1395-423: A precise model assessment. They noted that the agreement between the observations and the intermediate scenario was accidental because the climate sensitivity used was higher than current estimates. A year later, Hansen joined with Rahmstorf and colleagues comparing climate projections with observations. The comparison was done from 1990 through January 2007 against physics-based models that are independent from

1488-581: A radical change in land use that still continues. But, the relatively small human population had little impact on a global scale until the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750. This event, followed by the invention of the Haber-Bosch process in 1909, which allowed large-scale manufacture of fertilizers , led directly to rapid changes to many of the planet's most important physical, chemical and biological processes. The 1950s marked

1581-546: A rapid pace, which can be contributed to human activities and follow dynamics similar to many societal changes. It has its origins in the World Climate Research Programme , or WCRP, an international program under the leadership of Peter Bolin , which at the time of its establishment in 1980 focused on determining if the climate is changing, can it be predicted and do humans cause the change. The first results not only confirmed human impact but led to

1674-554: A shift in gear: global change began accelerating. Between 1950 and 2010, the population more than doubled. In that time, rapid expansion of international trade coupled with upsurges in capital flows and new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies, led to national economies becoming more fully integrated. There was a tenfold increase in economic activity and the world's human population became more tightly connected than ever before. The period saw sixfold increases in water use and river damming. About 70 percent of

1767-492: A study on black carbon using the global network of AERONET sun photometers. While the location of the AERONET instruments did not represent a global sample, they could still be used to validate global aerosol climatologies. They found that most aerosol climatologies underestimated the amount of black carbon by a factor of at least 2. This corresponds to an increase in the climate forcing of around 1 W/m , which they hypothesize

1860-470: A sustainable, socially just society in South Africa and Africa more widely. Humans are altering the planet's biogeochemical cycles in a largely unregulated way with limited knowledge of the consequences. Without steps to effectively manage the Earth system – the planet's physical, chemical, biological and social components – it is likely there will be severe impacts on people and ecosystems. Perhaps

1953-576: A team of 18 researchers to publish a paper titled "Global Warming in the Pipeline." In it, Hansen et al. concluded that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to an increase of 4.8 ±1.2   °C, significantly above earlier estimates. His team also concluded that the decline in global aerosol emissions from air pollution will accelerate the rate of global warming, going from an increase of 0.18 °C per decade between 1970 and 2010 to an increase of 0.27 °C per decade after 2010, with

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2046-404: Is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash . — James Hansen (March 2009) Hansen noted that in determining responsibility for climate change, the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on climate is determined not by current emissions, but by accumulated emissions over the lifetime of greenhouse gases in

2139-717: Is in the third millennium BC. Sumerians in Mesopotamia traded with settlers in the Indus Valley , in modern-day India. Since 1750, but more significantly, since the 1950s, global integration has accelerated. This era has witnessed incredible global changes in communications, transportation, and computer technology. Ideas, cultures, people, goods, services and money move around the planet with ease. This new global interconnectedness and free flow of information has radically altered notions of other cultures, conflicts , religions and taboos . Now, social movements can and do form at

2232-483: Is likely to shift toward dominance of CO 2 over aerosols". In 2003, Hansen wrote a paper called "Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?" in which he argued that human-caused forces on the climate are now greater than natural ones, and that this, over a long time period, can cause large climate changes. He further stated that a lower limit on "dangerous anthropogenic interference" was set by

2325-481: Is needed to slow CO 2 growth and to prevent a dangerous anthropogenic interference. Vilhelm Bjerknes began the modern development of the general circulation model in the early 20th century. The progress of numerical modeling was slow due to the slow speed of early computers and the lack of adequate observations. It was not until the 1950s that the numerical models were getting close to being realistic. Hansen's first contribution to numerical climate models came with

2418-417: Is partially offset by the cooling of non-absorbing aerosols. Estimations of trends in black carbon emissions show that there was a rapid increase in the 1880s after the start of the Industrial Revolution , and a leveling off from 1900 to 1950 as environmental laws were enacted. China and India have recently increased their emissions of black carbon corresponding to their rapid development. The emissions from

2511-464: Is representing his granddaughter as well as "future generations" as plaintiffs in the Juliana v. United States lawsuit, which is suing the United States government and some of its executive branch's positions for not protecting a stable climate system. As a college student at the University of Iowa , Hansen was attracted to science and the research done by James Van Allen's space science program in

2604-550: The Earth Institute at Columbia University . He is best known for his research in climatology , his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming , and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years, he has become a climate activist to mitigate the effects of global warming , on a few occasions leading to his arrest. Hansen also proposed an alternative approach of global warming , where

2697-834: The TED Talk "Why I must speak out about climate change". From 1981 to 2013, he was the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City , a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center . As of 2014 , Hansen directs the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University's Earth Institute. The program is working to continue to "connect the dots" from advancing basic climate science to promoting public awareness to advocating policy actions. Hansen

2790-521: The Venusian atmosphere . He later applied and refined these models to understand the Earth's atmosphere , and in particular, the effects that aerosols and trace gases have on Earth's climate. His development and use of global climate models has contributed to the further understanding of the Earth's climate . In 2009, his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren , was published. In 2012, he presented

2883-503: The World Meteorological Organization , weakened it to the extent that it was no longer fit for purpose given current knowledge of the state of the planet. James Hansen BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2016) Tang Prize (2018) James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1941) is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of

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2976-493: The urban heat island effect . The regional variation of warming, with more warming in the higher latitudes, is further evidence of warming that is anthropogenic in origin. In 2007, Stephen McIntyre notified GISS that many of the U.S. temperature records from the Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) displayed a discontinuity around the year 2000. NASA corrected the computer code used to process

3069-556: The 0.7°C global mean temperature increase of the last 100 years can essentially be explained by the effect of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide (such as methane ). Hansen was born in Denison , Iowa , to James Ivan Hansen and Gladys Ray Hansen. He was trained in physics and astronomy in the space science program of James Van Allen at the University of Iowa . He obtained a B.A. in physics and mathematics with highest distinction in 1963, an M.S. in astronomy in 1965 and

3162-534: The 1974 publication of the GISS model. He and his colleagues claimed that the model was successful in simulating the major features of sea-level pressure and 500mb heights in the North American region. A 1981 Science publication by Hansen and a team of scientists at Goddard concluded that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would lead to warming sooner than previously predicted. They used a one-dimensional radiative-convective model that calculates temperature as

3255-905: The Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS) developed by GISS scientists had it reached orbit. More recently, Brian Cairns of GISS is one of the deputy project scientists of the PACE mission, which launched in February 2024 and has two polarimeters on board. A key objective of Goddard Institute for Space Studies research is prediction of climate change in the 21st century. The research combines paleogeological record, analysis of comprehensive global datasets (derived mainly from spacecraft observations), with global models of atmospheric, land surface, and oceanic processes. Climate science predictions are based substantially on historical analysis of Earth's paleoclimate (climate through geological ages), and

3348-685: The Earth Sciences Division, including the Laboratory for Atmospheres, Laboratory for Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences, and Earth Observing System science office. GISS director James Hansen received the Heinz Award in 2001. In November 2004, climatologists Drew Shindell and Gavin Schmidt were named amongst Scientific American magazine's Top 50 Scientist award. One-time GISS post-doctoral scientist John C. Mather

3441-498: The Earth system is required". It stated that a research goal is to define and maintain a stable equilibrium in the global environment. In 2007, France called for UNEP to be replaced by a new and more powerful organization called the " United Nations Environment Organization ". The rationale was that UNEP's status as a "programme", rather than an "organization" in the tradition of the World Health Organization or

3534-577: The International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme have said that Earth is now operating in a "no analogue" state. Measurements of Earth system processes, past and present, have led to the conclusion that the planet has moved well outside the range of natural variability in the last half million years at least. Homo sapiens have been around for about 300,000 years. Humans have always altered their environment. The advent of agriculture around 10,000 years ago led to

3627-463: The Northern hemisphere and confined to continental regions. Warming in the past century was found to be 0.5-0.7 °C , with warming similar in both hemispheres. When the analysis was updated in 1988, the four warmest years on record were all in the 1980s. The two warmest years were 1981 and 1987. During a senate meeting on June 23, 1988, Hansen reported that he was ninety-nine percent certain the earth

3720-599: The Sun, and changes in the tilt of Earth on its axis. There is overwhelming evidence that now the main driver of the global change is the growing human population's demand for resources; some experts and scientists have described this phenomenon as the anthropocene epoch . In the last 250 years, human-caused change has accelerated and caused climate change , widespread species extinctions , fish-stock collapse, desertification , ocean acidification , ozone depletion , pollution, and other large-scale shifts. Scientists working on

3813-709: The UN has two bodies charged with coordinating environmental and development activities, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In 2004, the IGBP published "Global Change and the Earth System, a planet under pressure." The publication's executive summary concluded: "An overall, comprehensive, internally consistent strategy for stewardship of

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3906-482: The United Kingdom were estimated using a network of stations that measured black smoke and sulfur dioxide. They report that atmospheric black carbon concentrations have been decreasing since the beginning of the record in the 1960s, and that the decline was faster than the decline in black-carbon-producing fuel use. A 2007 paper used the GISS climate model in an attempt to determine the origin of black carbon in

3999-404: The ability of satellites to monitor the entire globe, they may be one of the most effective ways to monitor and study global change. His other interests include the development of global circulation models to help understand the observed climate trends, and diagnosing human impacts on climate. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, following his Ph.D. dissertation, Hansen published several papers on

4092-422: The arctic. Much of the arctic aerosol comes from south Asia. Countries such as the United States and Russia have a lower contribution than previously assumed. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international environmental treaty that has the objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with

4185-699: The atmosphere and its evolution. GISS was established in May 1961 by Robert Jastrow to do basic research in space sciences in support of Goddard programs. Formally the institute was the New York City office of the GSFC Theoretical Division but was known as the Goddard Space Flight Center Institute for Space Studies or in some publications as simply the Institute for Space Studies . But even before it opened,

4278-520: The climate system . In 2000, Hansen advanced an alternative view of global warming over the last 100 years, arguing that during that time frame the negative forcing via aerosols and the positive forcing via carbon dioxide ( CO 2 ) largely balanced each other out, and that the 0.74±0.18 °C net rise in average global temperatures could mostly be explained by greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide, such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons . However, even then he wrote "the future balance of forcings

4371-461: The climate system. Two elements were identified as particularly important when discussing dangerous anthropogenic interference: sea level rise and the extinction of species. They described a business-as-usual scenario, which has greenhouse gases growing at approximately 2% per year; and an alternate scenario, in which greenhouse gases concentrations decline. Under the alternate scenario, sea levels could rise by 1 meter per century, causing problems due to

4464-561: The components and vice versa . Therefore, the changes are studied through means of Earth system science . The first global efforts to address the environmental impact of human activities on the environment worldwide date before the concept of global change was introduced. Most notably, in 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm , which led to United Nations Environment Programme . While

4557-400: The dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades." In 2013, Hansen authored a paper called "Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide," in which he estimated climate sensitivity to be (3±1)   °C based on Pleistocene paleoclimate data. The paper also concluded that burning all fossil fuels "would make most of

4650-514: The data and credited McIntyre with pointing out the flaw. Hansen indicated that he felt that several news organizations had overreacted to this mistake. In 2010, Hansen published a paper entitled "Global Surface Temperature Change" describing current global temperature analysis. Hansen has also contributed toward the understanding of black carbon on regional climate. In recent decades, northern China has experienced increased drought, and southern China has received increased summer rain resulting in

4743-410: The dense population in coastal areas. But this would be minor compared to the 10-meter increase in sea level under the business-as-usual scenario. Hansen described the situation with species extinction similarly to that of sea level rise. Assuming the alternate scenario, the situation would not be good, but it would be much worse for business as usual. The concept of dangerous anthropogenic interference

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4836-457: The early 1980s, the computational speed of computers, along with refinements in climate models, allowed longer experiments. The models now included physics beyond the previous equations, such as convection schemes, diurnal changes, and snow-depth calculations. The advances in computational efficiency, combined with the added physics, meant the GISS model could be run for five years. It was shown that global climate can be simulated reasonably well with

4929-424: The efforts were global and the effects across the globe were considered, the Earth system approach was not yet developed at this time. The events, however, started a chain of events that led to the emergence of the field of global change research. The concept of global change was coined as researchers investigating climate change started that not only the climate but also other components of the Earth system change at

5022-411: The first version of their satellite temperature measurements in 1990. Contrary to climate models and surface measurements, their results showed a cooling in the troposphere . However, in 1998, Wentz and Schabel determined that orbital decay had an effect on the derived temperatures. Hansen compared the corrected troposphere temperatures with the results of the published GISS model, and concluded that

5115-815: The institute had been referred to in the press as the Goddard Institute for Space Studies . It was separated from the Theoretical Division in July 1962. Its offices were originally located in The Interchurch Center , and the institute moved into Columbia's Armstrong Hall (a renovated apartment building previously known as the Ostend apartments and subsequently the Oxford Residence Hotel ) in April 1966. From 1981 to 2013, GISS

5208-422: The intermediate scenario as the most likely, and that real-world greenhouse gas forcing had been closest to this scenario. It contained the effects of three volcanic eruptions in the fifty-year projections. They found that the observed warming was similar to two of the three scenarios. The warming rates of the two most modest warming scenarios were nearly the same through the year 2000, and they were unable to provide

5301-447: The investigations of the decadal trends in tropopause height, which could be a useful tool for determining the human "fingerprint" on climate. As of 12 February 2009 , the current version of the GISS model is Model E. This version has seen improvements in many areas, including upper-level winds, cloud height, and precipitation. This model still has problems with regions of marine stratocumulus clouds. A later paper showed that

5394-430: The large serial correlation in the global temperatures. Bassett and Lin found the statistical odds of a new temperature record to be small. Hansen countered by saying that having insider information shifted the odds to those who know the physics of the climate system, and that whether there is a new temperature record depends upon the particular data set used. The temperature data was updated in 1999 to report that 1998

5487-461: The largest concern is that a component of the Earth system, for example, an ocean circulation , the Amazon rainforest , or Arctic sea ice, will reach a tipping point and flip from its current state to another state: flowing to not flowing, rainforest to savanna , or ice to no ice. A domino effect could ensue with other components of the Earth system changing state rapidly. Intensive research over

5580-428: The last 20 years has shown that tipping points do exist in the Earth system, and wide-scale change can be rapid – a matter of decades. Potential tipping points have been identified and attempts have been made to quantify thresholds. But to date, the best efforts can only identify loosely defined " planetary boundaries " beyond which tipping points exist but their precise locations remain elusive. There have been calls for

5673-446: The model is in good agreement with the observations, noting that the satellite temperature data had been the last holdout of global warming denialists , and that the correction of the data would result in a change from discussing whether global warming is occurring to what is the rate of global warming, and what should be done about it. Hansen has continued the development and diagnostics of climate models. For instance, he has helped in

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5766-583: The model's main problems are having too weak of an ENSO -like variability, and poor sea ice modeling, resulting in too little ice in the Southern Hemisphere and too much in the Northern Hemisphere . In 2000 Hansen authored a paper called "Global warming in the twenty-first century: an alternative scenario" in which he presented a more optimistic way of dealing with global warming, focusing on non-CO 2 gases and black carbon in

5859-560: The next few decades, and that it would result in temperatures at least as high as during the Eemian . He argued that if the temperature rose 0.4 °C above the 1950–1980 mean for a few years, it would be the "smoking gun" pointing to human-caused global warming. In 2006, Hansen and colleagues compared the observations with the projections made by Hansen in his 1988 testimony before the United States Congress . They described

5952-561: The observations after 1990. They showed that the climate system may be responding faster than the models indicate. Rahmstorf and coauthors showed concern that sea levels are rising at the high range of the IPCC projections, and that this was due to thermal expansion and not from melting of the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets . Following the launch of spacecraft capable of determining temperatures, Roy Spencer and John Christy published

6045-453: The physics and astronomy department. A decade later, his focus shifted to planetary research that involved trying to understand the climate change on earth that will result from anthropogenic changes of the atmospheric composition. Hansen has stated that one of his research interests is radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres, especially the interpretation of remote sensing of the Earth's atmosphere and surface from satellites. Because of

6138-418: The planet Venus . Venus has a high brightness temperature in the radio frequencies compared to the infrared. He proposed that the hot surface was the result of aerosols trapping the internal energy of the planet. More recent studies have suggested that several billion years ago, Venus's atmosphere was much more like Earth's than it is now and that there were probably substantial quantities of liquid water on

6231-436: The planet to establish that the clouds were spherical and had a refractive index and cloud drop effective radius which eliminated all of the proposed cloud types except sulfuric acid. Kiyoshi Kawabata and Hansen expanded upon this work by looking at the variation of polarization on Venus. They found that the visible clouds are a diffuse haze rather than a thick cloud, confirming the same results obtained from transits across

6324-568: The planet uninhabitable by humans." In 2016, a team of 19 researchers led by Hansen published a paper "Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous" describing the effect of meltwater from ice sheets on the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (slowing it or even stopping) and Antarctic bottom water formation. This would speed up ice sheet melting and sea level rise by increasing

6417-441: The poles does not melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but flips suddenly from one state to another. When temperatures increased to 2 - 3 °C (3.6-5.4 °F) above today's level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59 centimeters but by 25 metres (82 ft). The ice responded immediately to changes in temperature." Hansen stressed the uncertainties around these predictions. "It is difficult to predict time of collapse in such

6510-496: The rapid increase in human activities which started around mid-20th century, i.e., the Great Acceleration . While the concept stems from research on the climate change , it is used to adopt a more holistic view of the observed changes. Global change refers to the changes of the Earth system, treated in its entirety with interacting physicochemical and biological components as well as the impact human societies have on

6603-456: The realisation of a larger phenomenon of global change. Subsequently Peter Bolin together with James McCarthy , Paul Crutzen , Hans Oeschger and others started International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme , or IGBP, under the sponsorship of International Council for Science . In 2001, in Amsterdam, a conference was held focused around the four major global-change research programmes at

6696-502: The sea-level/ temperature/ carbon dioxide record. Changes in carbon dioxide associated with continental drift, and the decrease in volcanism as India arrived at the Asian continent, allowed temperatures to drop & Antarctic ice-sheets to form. This resulted in a 75m drop in sea level, allowing our present-day coastlines & habitats to form and stabilize. Global change studies at GISS are coordinated with research at other groups within

6789-436: The short run, giving more time to make reductions in fossil fuel emissions . He notes that the net warming observed to date is roughly as big as that expected from non-CO 2 gases only. This is because CO 2 warming is offset by climate-cooling aerosols emitted with fossil fuel burning and because at that time non-CO 2 gases, taken together, were responsible for roughly 50% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming. In

6882-555: The shortest of all geological eras. Evidence suggests that if human activities continue to change components of the Earth system, which are all interlinked, this could heave the Earth system out of one state and into a new state. Global change in a societal context encompasses social, cultural, technological, political, economic and legal change. Terms closely related to global change and society are globalization and global integration. Globalization began with long-distance trade and urbanism . The first record of long distance trading routes

6975-600: The spectrum and possible spatial fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background. This led directly to the COBE satellite project and a Nobel Prize for Mather. GISS personnel were involved as instrument and science team scientists in multiple historic NASA solar system missions, Mariner 5 to Venus, Pioneer 10 and 11 to Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyager program , Pioneer Venus , Galileo to Jupiter,

7068-550: The stability of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets . His view on actions to mitigate climate change was that "halting global warming requires urgent, unprecedented international cooperation, but the needed actions are feasible and have additional benefits for human health, agriculture and the environment." In a 2004 presentation at the University of Iowa, Hansen announced that he was told by high-ranking government officials not to talk about how anthropogenic influence could have

7161-467: The sulfuric acid cloud layer. The linear polarization data obtained from the same mission confirmed that the low- and mid-level clouds were sulfuric acid with radius of about 1 micrometer. Above the cloud layer was a layer of submicrometre haze. Evidence published in the early 1980s showed that the clouds consist mainly of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid droplets. The first NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global temperature analysis

7254-466: The sun. The Pioneer Venus project was launched in May 1978 and reached Venus late that same year. Hansen collaborated with Larry Travis and other colleagues in a 1979 Science article that reported on the development and variability of clouds in the ultraviolet spectrum. They concluded that there are at least three different cloud materials that contribute to the images: a thin haze layer, sulfuric acid clouds and an unknown ultraviolet absorber below

7347-410: The surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere. Hansen continued his study of Venus by looking at the composition of its clouds . He looked at the near-infrared reflectivity of ice clouds, compared them to observations of Venus, and found that they qualitatively agreed. He also

7440-425: The term " black hole " as a short-hand for 'gravitationally completely collapsed star', though the term was not coined there. Hong-Yee Chiu is credited with introducing the term " quasar " while working at GISS in 1964. In September 1974, at a seminal meeting led by Patrick Thaddeus at GISS with John Mather (his then post-doc) and others discussions began on the possibility of building a satellite to measure both

7533-564: The time: WCRP, IGBP, International Human Dimensions Programme (IHDP) and Diversitas (now continued as Future Earth ). The conference was titled Challenges of a Changing Earth: Global Change Open Science Conference and was concluded with The Amsterdam Declaration on Global Change , best summarized in its first paragraph: In the past, the main drivers of planetary-scale changes have been solar variation , plate tectonics , volcanism , proliferation and abatement of life, meteorite impact, resource depletion , changes in Earth's orbit around

7626-515: The unsuccessful Mars Observer and Climate Orbiter , and Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. Polarimetry has been a speciality of GISS since the Pioneer, Voyager, and Galileo missions, and has been adapted to Earth observing missions as well. Notably, Michael Mishchenko of GISS was project scientist for the Glory mission, which failed to reach orbit after launch in 2011. Glory would have employed

7719-401: The water temperature at hundreds of meters depth, thawing ice shelves from below. And the cool fresh meltwater on the ocean close to Greenland and Antarctica leads to larger temperature difference between tropics and middle latitudes, what would enable storms as strong as in the last interglacial, the Eemian , whose evidence includes, among others, megaboulders on Bahamas. In 2023, Hansen led

7812-404: The world passing the 1.5 °C threshold before the end of the 2020s and the 2 °C threshold before 2050 without significant changes. The paper also concluded that sea level rise will be greater than the IPCC estimates and one of the ocean's major circulation systems could collapse before the end of the century. The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What

7905-567: The world's freshwater resource is now used for agriculture. This rises to 90 percent in India and China. Half of the Earth's land surface had now been domesticated. By 2010, urban population, for the first time, exceeded rural population. And there has been a fivefold increase in fertilizer use. Indeed, manufactured reactive nitrogen from fertilizer production and industry now exceeds global terrestrial production of reactive nitrogen. Without artificial fertilizers there would not be enough food to sustain

7998-541: The world's fisheries are now fully or over-exploited. Thirty percent of tropical rainforests disappeared. In 2000, Nobel prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen announced the scale of change is so great that in just 250 years, human society has pushed the planet into a new geological era: the Anthropocene . This name has stuck and there are calls for the Anthropocene to be adopted officially. If it is, it may be

8091-415: Was able to use a radiative transfer model to establish an upper limit to the size of the ice particles if the clouds were actually made of ice. By 1974, the composition of Venus' clouds had not yet been determined, with many scientists proposing a wide variety of compounds, including liquid water and aqueous solutions of ferrous chloride. Hansen and Hovenier used the polarization of sunlight reflected from

8184-584: Was clarified in a 2007 paper, finding that further warming of 1 °C would be highly disruptive to humans. An alternate scenario would keep the warming to below this if climate sensitivity were below 3 °C for doubled CO 2 . The conclusion was that CO 2 levels above 450 ppm were considered dangerous, but that reduction in non-CO 2 greenhouse gases could provide temporary relief from drastic CO 2 cuts. Further findings are that arctic climate change has been forced by non-CO 2 constituents as much as by CO 2 . The 2007 paper cautioned that prompt action

8277-464: Was directed by James E. Hansen . In June 2014, Gavin A. Schmidt was named the institute's third director. In the 1960s, GISS was a frequent center for high-level scientific workshops, including the "History of the Earth's Crust Symposium" in November 1966 which has been described as the meeting that gave birth to the idea of plate tectonics . At a GISS workshop in 1967, John Wheeler popularized

8370-486: Was published in 1981. Hansen and his co-author analyzed the surface air temperature at meteorological stations focusing on the years from 1880 to 1985. Temperatures for stations closer together than 1000 kilometers were shown to be highly correlated, especially in the mid-latitudes, providing a way to combine the station data to provide accurate long-term variations. They concluded that global mean temperatures can be determined even though meteorological stations are typically in

8463-456: Was the warmest year since the instrumental data began in 1880. They also found that the rate of temperature change was larger than at any time in instrument history, and concluded that the recent El Niño was not solely responsible for the large temperature anomaly in 1998. In spite of this, the United States had seen a smaller degree of warming, and a region in the eastern U.S. and the western Atlantic Ocean had actually cooled slightly. 2001 saw

8556-431: Was warmer then than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements, there was a clear cause and effect relationship with the greenhouse effect and lastly that due to global warming, the likelihood of freak weather was steadily increasing. With the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo , 1992 saw a cooling in global temperatures. There was speculation that this would cause the next couple of years to be cooler because of

8649-595: Was years later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006. Climate impacts researcher Cynthia Rosenzweig was awarded the World Food Prize in 2022. People who have worked at GISS and their periods of employment include: Global change Global change in broad sense refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth system. It is most commonly used to encompass the variety of changes connected to

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