In the late 1950's, global climate was an unknown threat to the world's environment and social systems. The connection between rising carbon dioxide concentrations and potential changes in global climate was not common knowledge, nor were the consequences of climate change understood--except for a few ORNL researchers who had just completed their first briefing to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commision (AEC) on the need to understand the global carbon cycle.
Today, our nation's leaders have declared that one of America's most important priorities for years and years to come is our obligation to deal with the problem of climate change and build a secure future for our country that allows economic growth and protection of the planet.
 | The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) is the primary global-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). CDIAC's scope includes potentially anything and everything that would be of value to users concerned with the greenhouse effect and global climate change. http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/ |
 CO2 sensor |
 healthy forest and groundcover |
 damaged tree tops |
  sponsored by DOE's Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Environmental Sciences Division, Carbon Dioxide Research Program |
ORNL researchers are using computer modeling to better understand the influences of terrestrial ecosystems and climatic variation on atmospheric CO2 content. They have discovered that, slight environmental changes in the past 100 years, have enabled plant biomass to increase and terrestrial ecosystems to soak up more CO2. Plants may be growing faster and larger because they are being "fertilized" by increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and increased deposition of air pollutants containing nitrogen, a plant nutrient. Even more significant, the ORNL model results show that carbon exchanges are sensitive to climate variations. The estimated net ecosystem production (plant biomass growth) changed by 2 billion tonnes of carbon globally between 1982 and 1984 as a result of changing weather patterns produced by the 1982-83 El Nino. |
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 | ORNL researchers have a National Science Foundation grant to conduct a project entitled Free-Air CO2 Enrichment of a Closed-Canopy Deciduous Forest. Carbon dioxide will be released from the towers to enrich the atmosphere within the circles, exposing the sweetgums to conditions that are expected to prevail in the next century. Changes in the trees and soil will give researchers insight into the complex biological and physical interactions that govern a forest's response to changes in the atmosphere. details |
 | CDIAC provides data management support for the Joint Global Ocean Flux Studies (JGOFS) carbon dioxide (CO2) measurements taken aboard research vessels during World Ocean Circulation Experiment Hydrographic Program cruises. http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/oceans/home.html |
 | This map shows the sampling locations of all oceanographic data sets currently available from CDIAC. Red lines represent only discrete measurements, blue lines are only underway measurements, and yellow lines are both discrete and underway measurements. |
   ARM archive | The ARM Archive supports the scientific field experiments of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program by storing and distributing the large quantities of data collected from these experiments. These data are used to research atmospheric radiation balance and cloud feedback processes, which are critical to the understanding of global climate change. |
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The ORNL Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) is operated as part
of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's (NASA's) Earth Science Enterprise. The ORNL DAAC
maintains data related to biogeochemical dynamics which are the
result of the interactions between the biological, geological, and
chemical components of the Earth's environment. DAAC | Fires and Smoke Plumes in Mexico, Friday, June 5, 1998 Image collected at Stennis Space Center Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and ORBIMAGE |
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North American Research Strategy for Tropospheric Ozone (NARSTO) program,
a 10-year research strategy to
understand the occurrence of tropospheric ozone by studying the formation,
transformation, and transport
mechanisms of ozone and its precursors. NARSTO |
 | The Computer Hardware, Advanced Mathematics and Model Physics (CHAMMP ) program is a Department of Energy program to rapidly advance the science of decade and longer scale climate prediction. http://www.epm.ornl.gov/chammp/chammp.html |
 Shallow water benchmarking run showing geopotential height of atmosphere, assuming a billiard ball earth with massive mountain centered over New Orleans. |
 High resolution run of sea surface temperatures using LANL's POP code. |
 Standard resolution (T42) run of PCCM2 atmosphere code showing a month average precipitable water. |
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| High resolution (T170) study using PCCM2: Pictures of the grid with moisture data. | ||
 | Instantaneous
snapshot of precipitable water from a high resolution (T170) calculation. contact: John B. Drake |
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GIS view of Southeast US showing Organic Matter in top 50cm of Soil. |
1983--CDIAC established--wins Data Center award
1990--ARM archive established
1991--CHAMMP begins
1994--CHAMMP run of PCCM2 on 512 nodes
--benchmarking spectral algorithms
1995--PCCM2 T170 (high resolution) run
images
--NASA DAAC
--precipitable water run
1996--Shallow water code part of ParkBench
--2d decomposition of CCM3
--novel numerical algorithms
--coupled models of climate systems in hetero env
1998--ARM has 3 million files/12 TB
--2D decompostion of CCS3 for PCM and CSM
1998->--regional climate science (output analysis)