Climate change is old news to Boulder scientists (they called that four decades ago)

February 1, 2010 · Posted by in Environment 

In the early 70s — when the media rarely addressed the far-out notion of climate change (or if they did, they put quotes around phrases like “the greenhouse effect”) — scientists at Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research were beginning to realize that people (insignificant though they generally seemed) might be able to impact the global climate.

 

NCAR's Mesa Lab in south Boulder.

A 1972 article in the Daily Camera “NCAR, Others Will Study Man’s Effects on Shaky Equilibrium of Earth Climate” appears to be one of the first in the Boulder newspaper to tackle the idea that humans might be able to drive the world to some sort of climatic tipping point.

NCAR scientist William Kellogg said this in the article:

There are obviously stabilizing factors that are strong enough to keep our global climate within reasonably narrow bounds, permitting ice ages to come and go, but damping out any large fluctuations.

But, now, man has entered the scene, and we must ask whether he can reach any of the lever  points on this gigantic environmental mechanism and influence it. If there are any lever points that he can reach, history has shown that he will probably be tempted to tamper with them.

The article didn’t talk much about greenhouse gases, other than to mention a growing “carbon dioxide blanket” that had the potential to warm the Earth.

In 1979, Kellogg and a colleague, Warren Washington, received a grant to study how CO2 interacts with the climate. They used the money to run a rudimentary climate model — one that didn’t include any interaction between the atmosphere and the oceans, land or ice caps — to see what would happen if the carbon dioxide was increased by a factor of two.

In the story, Washington points out that no one is yet sure exactly what effect CO2 will have on the climate:

We anticipate a warming effect in both the atmosphere and the oceans. It will probably be changes of a few degrees or less. But a few degrees have a  big effect on glaciers and the amount of water stored in them. …

I don’t think society ought to start making changes until we have a better understanding. It’s not an immediate crisis although it could be in the next 20, 30 or 50 years.

Well, 30 years later, scientists are calling it a crisis, and NCAR has grown from an organization where a couple of its scientists study CO2 on a short-term grant to a group to hundreds of PhD scientists studying climate change.

In the decades since Washington and Kellogg’s study, NCAR scientists have researched all aspects of the climate — including how such seemingly small variables like soil moisture and changing vegetation cover affect global climate patterns — and they still have a long way to go to create a more accurate climate model.

Here’s a look at one of the more light-hearted studies undertaken by NCAR scientists to understand climate change. This is from a 1991 Daily Camera article (and you’ll notice that by then, the greenhouse effect isn’t in quotes anymore).

The burp — the self-satisfied sign of a meal’s end — has global implications when it comes to cows.

Research that originated at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder is aimed at discovering what contribution bovine burping is making to the greenhouse effect.

Backpacks containing gas-measuring gear will be strapped onto hundreds of cows at Washington State University in Pullman. Each pack holds a gas monitor connected to a tube placed near the cow’s mouth.

Read more about NCAR’s history at DailyCamera.com.

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