Abstract |
Interest among public, governmental, and scientific, communities about 'global' climatic warming and the associated meteorological and oceanographic effects, is a topic of very considerable concern (McElroy, 1989; Mitchell, 1989). During the past several years, numerous national and international scientific committees have addressed this problem, as have newspapers and popular magazines. Government-sponsored legislation, particularly in the United States (for example, see Wirth, 1989), has been introduced to deal with the causes of 'global' climate change. Changes in climate are the norm when one studies the history of the Earth. These changes include the glacial epochs and the contemporary climatic variation of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation. Examination of palaeoclimatic records illustrate considerable natural and spatial variability which makes long-term (20-100 years) forecasting of climate change highly uncertain. Future climate (and arguably the present), however, will be influenced by Man-induced as well as natural processes. Together, these factors will cause future climate to evolve in uncertain ways. |