The Table below details the statistical correspondence between the most important patterns of observed climate and projections made for their behavior over the period of increase in the greenhouse effect. The results are as bad as they seem: The overall correspondence is statistically indistinguishable from zero. In many cases, the GCM actually predicts behavior that is mathematically opposite to what has occurred.

Explained Variance (%) Between Observed Temperature and GCM-Calculated Components

Values in outline are significantly different from zero at the .05 level for the model sample size. Zeros followed by asterisks are actually negative correlations, which would imply a negative skill forecast. Underlined values are "noise vs. noise" comparisons in which neither the observed data nor the model have any significant trend. Values followed by "+" indicate patterns in which nonzero trends were statistically similar between models and observations.

The trend for night (rather than day) warming, that I testified to on six previous occasions before Congress, now appears to be a worldwide phenomenon, rather than simply being confined to the United States. The accompanying table (Michaels and Stooksbury, 1992) details day/night and seasonal temperature changes around the Northern Hemisphere landmasses on a 100-year trended basis. Summer high temperatures--the ones most responsible for negative agricultural scenarios--have declined across the hemisphere which produces most of the world's food. Again, atmospheric behavior appears to be opposite to that which has been forecast. Winter night temperatures have risen dramatically. These figures are given in Table 2.

One hypothesis that has been tendered is that warming is being retarded. or inordinately channeled into the night (and therefore the winter, when nights are longer) because other industrial emissions, such as the sulfates that are associated with acid rain, are increasing the cloudiness of our hemisphere and therefore cooling the days while the nights warm. If

this were true, then the effect would tend to confine itself to lower elevations (where the industrial emissions flow), and to the Northern Hemisphere, because the emissions do not reside long enough in the atmosphere to be transported very far south.

TABLE 2

Area-Weighted Temperature Aggregate: U.S., Former Soviet Union, Mainland China

In fact, the data argue that sulfates are inadequate to explain observed changes. Figure 6 is a very reliable climate record from the Pic du Midi observatory, high above timberline in the Pyrenees (Bucher and Dessens, 1991), and above the layer containing most of the sulfate aerosol. The decline in day temperature and increase in night temperature is obvious. Cloudiness is also increasing and the daily temperature range is declining (this should occur as nights warm more than the days) in Australia (Jones, 1991), where the density of sulfate aerosols is approximately two orders of magnitude less than that in eastern North America or western Europe. In Australia, it is thought that the enhanced greenhouse operates less fettered by extraneous interference, and there, too, night warming has been much greater than that observed in the day.

Figure 6. Day and night temperatures at Pic du Midi observatory. See text for details.

In summary, here is what the data tell us. Concurrent with an enhancement of the earth's natural greenhouse that is equivalent to proceeding half-way to doubling the background CO2 concentration, we have observed the following:

1) A warming that has been consistently beneath forecast projections for the last 50 years,

2) A warming in which the hemisphere that should suffer the most in fact shows no significant change in the last 55 years,

3) A warming which is confined primarily to nights and winter, therefore lengthening the growing season, and

4) A lack of summer daytime warming, which precludes negative effects on agriculture and melt large areas of high-latitude land ice.

If these observations were to continue (and, if they are the response to an enhanced greenhouse, that would likely be the case) then nature would have to completely change its course in order to bring us to the deleterious changes feared by many.

These observations are tendered to demonstrate the remarkable disparity between forecasts of deleterious climatic change and what has been observed. The former argues for economically stringent intervention, while the latter provides absolutely no basis for the former.

How did such a disparity between policy and science arise, and how can this be avoided in the future?

What has happened with the issue of global warming is that the political process intervened before the resolution of the normal and creative tension that exists in science between "models" (hypotheses, or forecasts) and "facts".

The issue became prematurely politicized in part because several elected officials had seized upon it without a proper appreciation of this tension and its need for resolution before any policy should be enacted.

Another process was also a cause: the fact that virtually all funding for basic research in the environment is appropriated by the Congress of the United States. It is therefore impossible not to politicize science, especially when Members have promoted the issue of global warming as one requiring national and international political activity. For all of his good intentions, the Vice President of the United States has been a central figure in this process. His oversight of the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--two of the lead agencies in the study of global warming--would make it very difficult for Agency officials to argue before Congress that in fact the dita

indicate that global warming is a minor issue. This point of view is at considerable variance with one so eloquently expressed by the Vice President in his recent book.

One solution to this dilemma would be to encourage industry--which maintains its own perspective as surely as does the federal government--to become more involved in basic research. Specifically, I would proposed advanced tax credits for industry support of science, and a concomitant and equal reduction of federal support. This would keep support at its current level while broadening the perspectives from which that. support emanates and also reducing the federal deficit. The final result is that scientists would be freer to choose from a range of funding viewpoints--something that is obviously restricted when control of science funding is maintained by the Congress.

Because of the premature politicization of this issue, considerable pressure has already been exerted to act precipitously on the subject of global warming, and with great potential expense. I hope that you will now see that such a policy is not commensurate with the state of science, and that this disparity can only be remedied by an enhanced research effort supported both by industry and government.

Thank you for soliciting my testimony.

References:

Bucher, A., and J. Dessens, 1991. J. Climate 4, 859-868.

Christy J., 1993. Update of MSU-Satellite Temperatures through February, 1993. Sent via computer file from NASA-Huntsville.

Idso, S. B., and R. C. Balling Jr., 1991. Theor. Appl. Clim., 44, 37-41.

Jones, P. A., 1991. Aust. Meteor. Mag., 39, 181-189.

Kahl, J. D., et al., 1993. Nature 361, 335-337.

Manabe, S., et al., 1991. J. Climate 4, 785-818.

Michaels P. J. et al, 1993. 8th Conf on Appl. Climatology, American Meteorological Society, 150-155.

Michaels, P. J. and D. E. Stooksbury, 1992. Bull. Amer. Met. Soc. 73, 1563-1577.

Schlesinger M.E., and J. F. B. Mitchell, 1986. Model projections of the equilibrium climatic response to increased carbon dioxide. In Projecting the Climatic Effects of Increasing Carbon Dioxide. U. S. Department of Energy, Publication DOE/ER-0237, 83-147.