This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of how aerosols form in the atmosphere through in situ processes as well as via transport from the surface (dust storms, seas spray, biogenic emissions, forest fires etc.). Such an analysis has been followed by the consideration of both observation data (various field observational experiments) and numerical modeling results to assess climate impacts of aerosols bearing in mind that these impacts are the most significant uncertainty in studying natural and anthropogenic causes of climate change.
In Stability of Life on Earth , Professor Kondratyev and his team show that the concept of biotic regulation is of fundamental importance in solving a wide range of environmental and other problems. They put forward a new approach to the solution of old environmental problems. Beginning with a look at the geographic environment and structural units within it, they show that ecosystems represent a set of homogeneous, closely-correlated communities of organisms and their environment. Biologists call such correlated communities ‘biogeocenoses’, and they are similar to the corporate structures in economic systems and interact competitively with each other. On the basis of competitive interaction in the biosphere, self-organisation and management take place. The authors show how human economic activity perturbed balances in natural biogeochemical cycles, eliminating and strongly modifying natural land cover, the 20 th Century being the time when human activities ‘collided’ with Nature. They consider scientific bases for the stability and sustainability of life, and demonstrate how the scale and intensity of human-induced destruction of Nature and resultant feedback mechanisms have continuously expanded. They consider the likelihood of increasing numbers of natural disasters as a result of such activities, and propose that sustainable development should become a principal research topic during the 21 st Century.
Large-scale natural catastrophes are environmental phenomena. Numerous studies in recent years have concluded that the frequency of occurrence of such natural disasters have been incereasing. leading to an enhanced risk of very considerable human and economic losses and the widespread destruction and pollution of habitats, settlements and infrastructure. In 2001 over 650 natural disasters happened around the globe with economic losses exceeding $35 billion. 2004 ended with the South East Asian tsunami on 26th December with its huge toll on life and local economics and this demonstrated that the efffects of such disasters are most keenly felt in poorer or developing regions. The problem of natural disaster prediction and the implementation of environmental monitoring systems to receive, store and process the information necessary for solutions of specific problems in this area , have been analysed by the three authors of this book, all of whom are internationally respected experts in this field.
Opening with a survey of contemporary global ecodynamics, including its basic components, this book goes on to discuss greenhouse effect problems in the context of global carbon cycle dynamics. The coverage includes land ecosystem changes, air-sea exchange models, high-latitude environmental dynamics, and a discussion of basic aspects of global environmental modelling and relevant monitoring systems. The volume concludes by examining society systems with emphasis on the problems of sustainable development.
Professor Kondratyev and his team consider the concept of global warming due to the greenhouse effect and put forward a new approach to the problem of assessing the impact of anthropogenic processes. Considering data on both sources and sinks for atmospheric carbon and various conceptual schemes of the global carbon dioxide cycle, they suggest a new approach to studies of the problem of the greenhouse effect. They assess the role of different types of soil and vegetation in the assimilation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and discuss models of the atmosphere ocean gas exchange and its role in the carbon dioxide cycle, paying special attention to the role of the Arctic Basin. The authors also consider models of other global atmospheric cycles for a range of atmospheric constituents, and conclude by drawing together a range of scenarios on modelling the global carbon cycle.
As the impacts of environmental disasters on populations and their economic activity increase, the assessment of risk from such catastrophic events becomes more urgent not only for humankind, but also for other living organisms. This book details the problems caused by such environmental disasters and discusses possible mitigation methods, including risk mapping using satellite monitoring data.
The growing number of published works dedicated to global environmental change leads to the realization that protection of the natural environment has become an urgent problem. The question of working out principles of co evolution of man and nature is being posed with ever-increasing persistence. Scientists in many countries are attempting to find ways of formulating laws governing human processes acting on the environment. Numerous national and international programs regarding biosphere and climate studies contribute to the quest for means of resolving the conflict between human society and nature. However, attempts to find efficient methods of regulating human activity on a global scale encounter principal difficulties. The major difficulty is the lack of an adequate knowledge base pertaining to climatic and biospheric processes as wen as the largely incomplete state of the databases concerning global processes occurring in the atmosphere, in the ocean, and on land. Another difficulty is the inability of modern science to formulate the requirements which must be met by the global databases necessary for reliable evaluation of the state of the environ ment and fore casting its development for sufficiently long time intervals.
It is well known that the ozone layer protects the Earth and its life from the harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation of the sun. It has also been discovered that this layer was being depleted to the extent that holes were appearing in it by several substances (such as CFCs) which have since been banned. Despite this action recent studies have shown that the ozone layer is still being depleted at a rapid rate and that holes are now beginning to appear over areas which are quite densely populated. Atmospheric Ozone Variability examines the potential problems that depletion of ozone causes in relation to climate change, human health and the ecosystem. It also examines the ways in which ozone is formed and depleted as being fundamental to the debate.
Diminishing water resources are becoming of increasing concern because in many countries the sources of drinking water are close to being exhausted. Therefore, there is an urgent need to study and assess the various components of global water resources, of which freshwater lakes are one of the most important. This book discusses contemporary limnological problems on a local, regional and global scale with special emphasis on the application of remote-sensing techniques to monitor lake dynamics, thermodynamics, biodynamics and water quality. An interactive approach is used to assess various processes from both the numerical modelling and observational standpoints. The authors recommend a combined use of in situ and remote-sensing data, giving a specific comparative analysis of the lakes of north-western Russia and the American Great Lakes as an illustration. The role of GIS is discussed and emphasised.
This is the first book to provide a complete overview of aerosol physics in climate research, containing details of work carried out in the former Soviet Union that has not been fully recognised in the West.
