May 7, 2014 | Geophysical Research Letters, a leading journal in Earth science, is toasting its 40th anniversary this month with an editor-picked anniversary collection of 40 papers, several of which include authors from NCAR.

Produced by the American Geophysical Union, GRL has published some 31,000 papers since its founding in May 1974. The journal is designed to allow rapid publication of short, timely peer-reviewed articles with broad interest.

A group of current and former editors at GRL narrowed down the anniversary collection to 40 papers from an initial set of 1,000 candidates. Six of the final choices include NCAR authors. The research covers topics that range from sea ice and sea level rise to wintertime temperatures, midlatitude storm tracks, and high-altitude modeling.

The six articles span all five decades of GRL’s existence. The earliest is a 1974 paper by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen (now at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry). It was among the first to quantify the potential loss of stratospheric ozone due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were widely used in spray cans at the time.

The six papers—with names of authors affiliated with NCAR at the time of publication shown in bold—are:

Estimates of possible future ozone reductions from continued use of fluoro-chloro-methanes (CF₂Cl₂, CFCl₃)
Paul Crutzen
1974

A coupled thermosphere/ionosphere general circulation model
Raymond Roble, Cicely Ridley, Arthur Richmond, and Robert Dickinson
1988 

Influence of variations in extratropical wintertime teleconnections on northern hemisphere temperature
James Hurrell
1996

Consistent poleward shift of the storm tracks in simulations of 21st century climate
Jeffrey Yin
2005

Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast
Julienne Stroeve, Marika Holland, Walt Meier, Ted Scambos and Mark Serreze
2007 

Acceleration of the contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise
Eric Rignot, Isabella Velicogna, Michiel van den Broeke, Andy Monaghan, and Jan Lenaerts
2011 

“It’s wonderful to see a sampling of NCAR’s distinguished science spotlighted in this special issue, as well as the many contributions from our broader community. It is quite an impressive collection,” said UCAR president Tom Bogdan.

American Geophysical Union, 40 Years of Geophysical Research Letters, 2014.

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