Data center is keeping tabs on global weather, warming

By Bruce Henderson, Charlotte Observer Copyright 1998 Dallas Morning News August 9, 1998

ASHEVILLE, N.C. - It may be the summer's hottest news:

The first six months of 1998 were the warmest on record for planet Earth.

At its current pace, this year is likely to exceed 1997 as the warmest since reliable records began in 1880. Nine of the past 11 years have set such records.

Facts like these fuel debate over what could be the biggest environmental story ever, global climate change. They come from federal scientists who pore over mounds of data in this cool, green city.

The National Climatic Data Center is the world's largest trove of weather data. It stores the microfilmed jottings of Thomas Jefferson, upper-air observations of Thule, Greenland, and barometric-pressure readings from Plano.

Weather never rests, and neither does information about it - the equivalent of 18 million pages pours into the center every day, regular as the tides.

That kind of statistical context gives researchers here the long view of the phenomenon once known as global warming.

The record heat of the 14 months through June is "just another piece of the data," said Robert Quayle, chief of the center's Global Climate Laboratory. (July's figures have not been calculated.)

Most scientists agree that the Earth is warming. Most also acknowledge that people play some role, mostly by burning fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide and other gases that blanket Earth's atmosphere.

"The balance of the evidence indicates that our activities are beginning to influence the climate," Mr. Quayle said. "That's a very shy statement, as befits the evidence."

The center is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It came to this mountain city in 1952 simply because office space was available.

Its 179 employees spend much of their time storing land, ocean and atmospheric readings from a global network of human observers and automated stations, satellites, ships, radar and weather balloons. They write publications, update online information and answer 160,000 customer requests for detailed data a year.

Their mission is to place climate in historical perspective.

Climatologists once believed that was a straightforward task. A 30-year picture, they thought, could accurately describe weather patterns as they had been for thousands of years.

That assumption died in the 1970s, Mr. Quayle said, when "unprecedented things started happening" that suggested climate could change much more quickly.

As researchers pieced together historic records, they found unexplained leaps in recent decades from the globe's annual average temperature of about 59 degrees.

Global land and sea temperatures began steadily rising, the scientists found. The Earth has warmed about 1 degree this century.

The center developed two indexes in 1995 to measure changes in the U.S. climate. The indexes track the occurrence of extreme weather, such as floods and droughts, and trends that are expected to result from the greenhouse effect.

Since 1970, they've found, precipitation has increased about 5 percent above levels of the previous 70 years. Heavy downpours are increasing. Temperatures have also risen, mainly during winter and spring, and nights are warmer.

Climate extremes - including unusually heavy rain and high temperatures - have also occurred about 1.5 percent more frequently since 1976 than in the previous 65 years. Computer models also suggest an overall increase in severe droughts, but that hasn't happened yet.

There is a small chance the changes are a result of natural variations, the center says. Mr. Quayle says researchers need to know what percentage of climatic changes are a result of greenhouse gas emissions.

But in this summer's onerous heat, which followed a U.S. commitment last year to rein in greenhouse gases, some politicians find all the evidence they need.

"How much more proof do we need that global warming is real?" Vice President Al Gore said last month as he lobbied for reductions in greenhouse emissions.

Detractors say they take less issue with the center's work than with the spins put on it by politicians and advocates.

Differences between climate-change scientists are "a matter of degrees, literally," said John Christy, a University of Alabama-Huntsville atmospheric scientist.

Mr. Christy says the center has a "fixation" with extreme weather that magnifies events pointing toward global warming but ignores contrary ones. Where some researchers detect warning signs in severe droughts and heavy rainfall, Mr. Christy sees natural patterns that haven't changed in a century.

"Dallas is due," he said, referring to the record heat wave now scorching Texas. Eight of the previous 10 years there, he said, and 20 of the past 30 were cooler than average.

Patrick Michaels, a University of Virginia professor and fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute, says the center has failed to correct clear misstatements about climate change.

President Clinton and Mr. Gore have wrongly attributed flooding, tornadoes and summertime glacier melts to climate change, Mr. Michaels said. And he says the center's greenhouse index "really hasn't changed in 70 years" despite its depiction of increased warming.

"Their research is good, but unfortunately it is clearly being played politically," Mr. Michaels said. "I don't think they're telling the whole truth."

Thomas Karl, who was promoted from the center's senior scientist to director in April, is a widely quoted veteran of the climate-change debate.

"Many people come to this issue with an agenda," Mr. Karl said. "They would prefer to see things happen that would benefit them, either ecologically or from an economic standpoint."

Much more remains unknown about how the climate works. How the North Atlantic moderates temperatures in high-latitude Europe. The effect of rising temperatures on El Ninos, which doused the Carolinas with heavy winter and spring rains. The role of sunspots and other solar activity.

If current trends hold, researchers say, temperatures could rise 3 to 4 degrees by 2100 - "significant enough that we need to pay attention to it," Mr. Karl said. Such changes could have wide effects on agriculture, coastal cities and energy needs.

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