Surface air temperature response to increasing global industrial productivity: A beneficial greenhouse effect?

Abstract

Comparisons of trends of global industrial productivity, Northern Hemispheric and United States annual mean temperatures, U.S. annual and summer mean maximum and mean minimum temperatures, and U.S. cloud cover suggest that the net result of the CO2/trace gas greenhouse effect and certain biologically-modulated negative feedbacks related to cloud characteristics may be a moderate increase in nighttime minimum temperatures with no change in daytime maximum values. Such a response, if verified by further studies, would likely be desirable, for it would reduce low temperature stresses on biological and mechanical systems, significantly amplify many of the positive botanical effects of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, and produce few, if any, deleterious climatic effects. In a word, it may well be beneficial. © 1991 Springer-Verlag.