Author Archives: peggy

The Value of Zeroes

Posted on 08/29/2007 by peggy

Last week, my husband and I went hiking in Montana, looking for marine shelled fossils and birds along the way. We were in much the same place where we saw all the forest fires last year (see blog on Forest … Continue reading →

Posted in General Science | Leave a comment

Climate Change 4. Carbon Dioxide Changes

Posted on 08/16/2007 by peggy

(Note: We discuss carbon dioxide because it contributes to slightly over half of current greenhouse warming, but we must remember that methane, CFCs, ozone, and nitrous oxide together account with slightly less than half). When I was a graduate student … Continue reading →

Posted in Atmosphere, Carbon, Climate Change, Earth System Science | 2 Comments

Climate Change Part 3. The gases in air

Posted on 08/07/2007 by peggy

The gases in the air important to climate change are called “greenhouse gases.” To understand what a greenhouse gas does, you first have to understand a little about radiation. Not the science-fiction stuff that changes cockroaches into giant monsters that … Continue reading →

Posted in Atmosphere, Carbon, Climate Change, Earth System Science | 5 Comments

What affects Earth’s climate?

Posted on 07/16/2007 by peggy

When I arrived at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, in the 1970s, I started hearing the debate about whether the global climate was getting warmer or cooler. From the “warming” graph in the previous blog, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change, Earth System Science | 2 Comments

It is getting warmer!

Posted on 07/05/2007 by peggy

Figure 1 shows how Earth’s average temperature has changed over time from two research groups – one the National Climate Data Center in the United States, and the second from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia … Continue reading →

Posted in Air Temperature, Atmosphere, Climate Change, Earth System Science | 11 Comments