Ned Nikolov

USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins CO USA

The human story of two scientist triggered by the

have a unique and elegant research paper entitled 'New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model'. Their work comes out of left field; it provides a shocking new paradigm heretofore unbeknown to science; it is physically plausible, and it proves beyond a doubt that gre...

A recent study has revealed that the Earth’s natural atmospheric greenhouse effect is around 90 K or about 2.7 times stronger than assumed for the past 40 years. A thermal enhancement of such a magnitude cannot be explained with the observed amount of outgoing infrared long-wave radiation absorbed by the atmosphere (i.e. ≈ 158 W m-2), thus requirin...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/2193-1801-3-723.].

The Global Mean Annual near-surface Temperature (GMAT) of a planetary body is an expression of the available kinetic energy in the climate system and a critical parameter determining planet's habitability. Previous studies have relied on theory-based mechanistic models to estimate GMATs of distant bodies such as extrasolar planets. This 'bottom-up'...

The presence of atmosphere can appreciably warm a planet's surface above the temperature of an airless environment. Known as a natural Greenhouse Effect (GE), this near-surface Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement (ATE) as named herein is presently entirely attributed to the absorption of up-welling long-wave radiation by greenhouse gases. Often quoted...

Expands the Concept of Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Using Thermodynamic Principles: Implications for Predicting Future Climate Change. Presents a whole new paradigm for understanding the basic fundemental cause of baseline global warming. Demonstrates that atmospheric mass and TOA solar radiation provide our planet with atmospheric warm and that a...

Canopy leaf area index (LAI) is an important structural parameter of the vegetation controlling pollutant uptake by terrestrial ecosystems. This paper presents a computationally efficient algorithm for retrieval of vegetation LAI and canopy clumping factor from satellite data using observed Simple Ratios (SR) of near-infrared to red reflectance. Th...

The RAWS network and RAWS data-use systems are closely reviewed and summarized in this report. RAWS is an active program created by the many land-management agencies that share a common need for accurate and timely weather data from remote locations for vital operational and program decisions specific to wildland and prescribed fires. A RAWS measur...

The weather patterns of the west side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (cold, wet winters and hot, dry summers) strongly influence how water is partitioned between transpiration and evaporation and result in a specific strategy of water use by ponderosa pine trees (Pinus ponderosa) in this region. To investigate how year-round water fluxes were parti...

A new biophysical model (FORFLUX) is presented to study the simultaneous exchange of ozone, carbon dioxide, and water vapor between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. The model mechanistically couples all major processes controlling ecosystem flows trace gases and water implementing recent concepts in plant eco-physiology, micrometeorology,...

Old-growth forests of Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii Parry ex. Engelm.) and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa (Hook.) Nutt.) dominate much of the landscape of the Rocky Mountains. We characterized the structure, biomass and production of 18 old-growth (200–450-year-old) spruce/fir forests in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, as well as the...

Recent legislation to initiate vegetation management in the Central Sierra hydrologic region of California includes a focus on corresponding changes in water yield. This served as the impetus for developing a combined geographic information system (GIS) and simulation assessment framework. Using the existing vegetation density condition, together w...

Nine ecosystem process models were used to predict CO 2 and water vapor exchanges by a 150-year-old black spruce forest in central Canada during 1994 –1996 to evaluate and improve the models. Three models had hourly time steps, five had daily time steps, and one had monthly time steps. Model input included site ecosystem characteristics and meteoro...

Ecosystem models are useful tools for evaluating environmental controls on carbon and water cycles under past or future conditions. In this paper we compare annual carbon and water fluxes from nine boreal spruce forest ecosystem models in a series of sensitivity simulations. For each comparison, a single climate driver or forest site parameter was...

www.lter.uaf.edu/pdf/772_amthor_2001.pdf

Assessing the long-term exchange of trace gases and energy between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere is an important priority of the current climate change research. In this regard, it is particularly significant to provide valid data on simultaneous fluxes of carbon, water vapor and pollutants over representative ecosystems. Eddy covarianc...

The paper presents a generic computer model for estimating short-term steady-state fluxes of CO2, water vapor, and heat from broad leaves and needle-leaved coniferous shoots of C3 plant species. The model explicitly couples all major processes and feedbacks known to impact leaf biochemistry and biophysics including biochemical reactions, stomatal f...

Predictions of forest ecosystem response to changes in climate and atmospheric CO2 concentration require hierarchically structured process models. Present forest simulation models have conceptual limitations that restrict their application to climate-change studies. A major drawback of forest succession models is that they often lack physiological...