Interview with Klaus Wyrtki
227
the TOGA TAO and similar systems, because the satellites don’t penetrate inside the
ocean.
So far the Southern Hemisphere is grossly neglected. The Southern Hemisphere will be in the end more decisive for the interpretation of climate change than
the Northern Hemisphere, because it connects the three oceans, and it is the most
powerful ocean–atmosphere engine that we have and it has not been sufficiently studied because of the lack of data. People study these things first when they have good
data.
No wonder that certain people in the sixties did not want to go to Antarctica because
they became seasick and found it too cold.
30
You are so right about that. But there are other people who love it.
Could you make another kind of forecast, not about science, but about the nature
itself? Within the next fifty years, will there be global warming? How will the average
temperature at the sea surface change within the next fifty years?
There are many people working on that problem. I have only an opinion. We will see a
continuation of global warming, whereby I am not quite positive whether it is primarily
natural, or primarily man-induced. Probably both components are important. When
you ask me how big that change will be over fifty years, I would say, not more than
it has been in the last fifty years. With regard to sea level my successor
31 in the sea
level project has made a very interesting plot. It starts with the first prediction of 3 m
over one century, or something like that by the club of Rome. Then came a few years
later 1 to 1.5 m and then 0.2 to 1 m and later 40 cm. He put a regression line through
that cloud of dots which has an exponential decay to the average value of the last
100 years. So this is where the forecasts go. They converge towards the extrapolation
of the last 100 years. That is approximately correct for the next 50 years, 10 cm in
50 years, which is a little more than in the last century, which was 15 cm.
Climate change will always be of interest, ocean–atmosphere interaction in
connection with climate change. It will lose in importance. What will gain in importance will be chemical pollution, biological change—which is of course embedded
into climate change—water resources. Years ago in Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, I had
to spend three dollars for a liter of water. I said to my friends, “before you die you
will see that water is more expensive than gas”.
But water resources have a lot to do with climate change.
They do, they are a fundamental part of climate change. But no doubt, the warmer,
the more rain you get. It may not fall at the right places. But basically it will still fall
in the same places as now. There may be shifts, but unless we get a total change of
atmosphere circulation the monsoons will always happen.
30 See page 209.
31 Gary Mitchum.
227
the TOGA TAO and similar systems, because the satellites don’t penetrate inside the
ocean.
So far the Southern Hemisphere is grossly neglected. The Southern Hemisphere will be in the end more decisive for the interpretation of climate change than
the Northern Hemisphere, because it connects the three oceans, and it is the most
powerful ocean–atmosphere engine that we have and it has not been sufficiently studied because of the lack of data. People study these things first when they have good
data.
No wonder that certain people in the sixties did not want to go to Antarctica because
they became seasick and found it too cold.
30
You are so right about that. But there are other people who love it.
Could you make another kind of forecast, not about science, but about the nature
itself? Within the next fifty years, will there be global warming? How will the average
temperature at the sea surface change within the next fifty years?
There are many people working on that problem. I have only an opinion. We will see a
continuation of global warming, whereby I am not quite positive whether it is primarily
natural, or primarily man-induced. Probably both components are important. When
you ask me how big that change will be over fifty years, I would say, not more than
it has been in the last fifty years. With regard to sea level my successor
31 in the sea
level project has made a very interesting plot. It starts with the first prediction of 3 m
over one century, or something like that by the club of Rome. Then came a few years
later 1 to 1.5 m and then 0.2 to 1 m and later 40 cm. He put a regression line through
that cloud of dots which has an exponential decay to the average value of the last
100 years. So this is where the forecasts go. They converge towards the extrapolation
of the last 100 years. That is approximately correct for the next 50 years, 10 cm in
50 years, which is a little more than in the last century, which was 15 cm.
Climate change will always be of interest, ocean–atmosphere interaction in
connection with climate change. It will lose in importance. What will gain in importance will be chemical pollution, biological change—which is of course embedded
into climate change—water resources. Years ago in Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, I had
to spend three dollars for a liter of water. I said to my friends, “before you die you
will see that water is more expensive than gas”.
But water resources have a lot to do with climate change.
They do, they are a fundamental part of climate change. But no doubt, the warmer,
the more rain you get. It may not fall at the right places. But basically it will still fall
in the same places as now. There may be shifts, but unless we get a total change of
atmosphere circulation the monsoons will always happen.
30 See page 209.
31 Gary Mitchum.