IGBP Annual Report 2 0 0 2 www.igbp.kva.se IGBP Annual Report 2002 Table of Contents 1......... Director’s Report ................................................................................................ 4 2. Science Highlights ............................................................................................. 7 Earth-System Models of Intermediate Complexity - EMICs Land-use Change, Aerosol Production and Climate: Size Matters!! The Role of Iron in Ocean Carbon Sinks Was the Medieval Warm Period as warm as the 1990s? 3......... IGBP 2002: Status of the Programme ............................................................ 16 Introduction Projects 4. National Committees ........................................................................................ 28 Background Current Status Strategy of Development for National Committees IGBP National Committee Chairs 5. IGBP Synthesis Project .................................................................................... 36 Global-Regional Linkages in the Earth System Challenges of a Changing Earth. Proceedings of the Global Change Open Science Conference, Amsterdam, 10-13 July 2001 6. Earth System Science Partnership ................................................................. 39 Introduction Joint Projects Other Joint Activities 7. Communication ................................................................................................. 45 Introduction Internal Communication External Communication ESSP Communication Looking Forward 8. Scientific Publications...................................................................................... 50 2 9. Financial Report ............................................................................................... 53 Statement of Income and Expendture 10. Databases ........................................................................................................... 57 Introduction 11. IGBP Scientific Committee and Secretariat Staff ..................................... 59 IGBP Scientific Committee IGBP Secretariat Staff 12. A Glossary of Acronyms ................................................................................ 64 3 Director’s Report The focus of IGBP shifted in 2002 to the implementation of plans for the programme’s second decade of research. Building on the solid base of work that is documented in the synthesis project and was presented at the Challenges of a Changing Earth conference in Amsterdam in 2001, the programme has now settled into its new structure, sharpened the scientific questions that it will address, intensified the evolution towards a more integrated community that is building a more unified approach to global biogeochemistry, and enhanced the connections to its partner global change programmes under the framework of the Earth System Science Partnership. The year saw the finalisation of the new IGBP structure, with a total of eight projects: three oriented towards the three major Earth System compartments - land, ocean and atmosphere; three concentrating on the interfaces that transport and transform matter and energy between the three compartments; and two focusing on the changing environ- ment of the planet as a whole, from past through present to the future. The Surface Ocean - Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS), the first of the new IGBP projects, developed rapidly during the year and has entered into the implementation phase. The first of the original IGBP projects - Biospheric Aspects of the Hydrological Cycle (BAHC) - reached its sunset at the end of 2002 and completed its work on time and in exemplary fashion. BAHC research has contributed significantly to a new understanding of the role of terrestrial biospheric processes in Earth System functioning and of the complex changes that are occur- ring in continental aquatic systems. 4 With the approval of the Integrated Land Ecosystem - Atmosphere Processes Study (ILEAPS), the atmosphere-related projects of IGBP are now in place. By the end of the year, the Integrated Global Atmo- spheric Chemistry Project (IGAC) had completed a rapid and smooth transition to its second decade with a completely new science plan and implementation strategy. The two most complex of the new projects - the land and ocean components - worked hard throughout the year to meet significant planning challenges and made significant progress towards the beginning of implementation. Two of the pillars of IGBP - the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) and the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) project - completed their penultimate year, having already delivered much new science aimed at their original objectives. Three ongoing projects - Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ), Past Global Changes (PAGES) and Global Analysis, Integration and Modelling (GAIM) all underwent significant re-orientation throughout the year to better fulfil their new roles in IGBP. With the publication and wide distribution of the first volumes in the re-launched IGBP Global Change Book Series with Springer-Verlag the START (Global Change System for Analysis, Research and Train- ing) synthesis and the collection of plenary presentations from the Global Change Open Science Conference in Amsterdam the legacy of IGBP’s first decade is now reaching a broader audience. Furthermore, the extensive publications list illustrates that the scientific productivity of the programme is being maintained through the transition phase. Collaboration with IGBP’s partner programmes - DIVERSITAS (an international programme of biodiversity science), IHDP (the Inter- national Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change) and WCRP (the World Climate Research Programme) - grew strongly under the banner of the Earth System Science Partnership. The three joint projects on issues of global sustainability - carbon/ energy systems, food systems and water resources - all made rapid progress, while early discussions were held on the establishment of a set of integrated regional studies. 5 Outreach and communication were also important activities for the programme in 2002. A strategic review of capacity building and regional research, aimed at improving interaction with START and other regional research networking organisations, was initiated. Dis- cussions are ongoing with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to ensure that IGBP’s research is of maximum value to the assessment com- munity. Collaboration with the observation community also strength- ened through IGBP’s participation in the Integrated Global Observing Strategy Partnership (IGOS-P). The past year was a pivotal one for the programme. IGBP has now established an exciting, integrative and functional structure for its next decade; has significantly enhanced its collaboration within the Earth System Science Partnership and beyond to the assessment, observation and regional networking communities; and is moving rapidly from discussion and planning into active and vigorous implementation of Earth System science. Will Steffen Executive Director Stockholm, Sweden April 2003 6 Science Highlights Scientific research, published in the refereed scientific literature, lies at the heart of IGBP’s work. It provides the fundamental basis on which all other products are derived. Below are a few examples of the type of research achievements arising from research in IGBP projects during 2002. Many more could be presented, but these examples give a taste of the variety, breadth and importance of IGBP research. Earth-System Models of Intermediate Complexity - EMICs In order to explore the relationships between components of the Earth System that may control the behaviour of the Earth System as a whole, it is necessary to develop models that capture the critical feedbacks and interactions that drive this highly non-linear system from one mode of operation to another. It is also essential to be able to run such models for long times to validate them, ensure model stability, and to explore long-term changes in system behaviour. Current full-complexity high- resolution models cannot operate over sufficiently long model times (thousands of years) in order for the full range of Earth System dynam- ics, as revealed in ice core and other palaeo records, to be simulated. Earth-System Models of Intermediate Complexity (EMICs, Fig. 1) have been developed to tackle these issues. EMICs address two fundamental requirements: first, being simple enough to permit numerical integra- tion over many millennia and, second, being complex enough, by including more interactions, to yield a more realistic picture of the Earth System than is achieved by comprehensive models. 7 Figure 1 One success of EMICs was the retrodiction of the collapse of the Saha- ran ecosystem some 5500 years ago (Fig. 2, see also IGBP Science 4). The cave paintings in northern Sudan indicated a thriving ecosystem, but it rapidly changed to a desert, as indicated by the green curves, much more suddenly than the slow change in solar insolation (red line). The model runs captured the nonlinearities involved in solar radiation, precipitation, and land cover parameters. Figure 2 Figure 3 Another success of EMICs is their simulation of the three modes of planetary operation during glacial times, and the abrupt changes between them. The large Earth in the middle of Fig. 3 shows conditions during most of the last ice age. Below is the situation during a warm Dansgaard-Oeschger event, in which the Atlantic “conveyor