According to a team of climatologists, equilibrium climate sensitivity – the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide – may be underestimated in individual climate models. “Probabilistic estimates of climate system properties often rely on comparing the model simulation with observed temperature records and an estimate of internal climate variability,” the researchers […]
Katharine Hayhoe knows that climate models are not perfect. “The more you know about models, the less you trust them and the more you blow their tires,” says Dr. Hayhoe, co-director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. Why we wrote this When planning for the future, certainty can be hard to come […]
New climate models unveiled on Tuesday by French researchers showed that the Earth’s average temperature could increase by one “creepy“6.5 to 7.0°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century if drastic action is not taken immediately to reduce carbon emissions. The findings, presented at a press conference in Paris, suggest the planet could […]
Computer models of the climate are at the heart of calls to ban the cheap, reliable energy that powers our thriving economy and promotes healthier, longer lives. For decades, these models have projected dramatic warming small fossil increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, with catastrophic consequences. Yet real-world data doesn’t cooperate. They only show a […]
Chaos theory encompasses vast swaths of mathematics and physics, but it was Edward Lorenz who immortalized it in popular culture. Its now famous 1972 presentation, which summarized his decade-long work in the field, focused on a single provocative question: Can the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil trigger a tornado in Texas? Although he […]
A new reconstruction of global mean surface temperature trends over the past 2,000 years has identified the major causes of decade-scale climate change. The analysis suggests that the Earth’s current rate of warming, caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases, is greater than any previously observed rate of warming. The researchers also found that airborne […]
A new study shows that climate models consistently overestimate the warming effect of rising carbon dioxide concentrations on climate. Researchers have long known that there are significant discrepancies between climate model projections, based on assumptions about the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions on global temperatures, and actual climate observations. , but modellers and those […]
Source: Paleooceanography and Paleoclimatology A translation of this article was made possible through a partnership with Planeteando. A translation of this article may be possible thanks to an association with Planeteando When it comes to climate modeling, understanding the past is key to predicting the future. Scientists use all kinds of materials to reconstruct the […]
Source: Geophysical Research Letters One of the most difficult questions regarding climate change is how the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere will affect water availability around the world. Climate models present a range of possible scenarios, some more extreme than others– which can complicate planning for cities, states and countries. Now, however, in a new […]
Professor Stephen Belcher is Chief Scientist at UK Met Office; Doctor Olivier Boucher is at the head of Pierre Simon Laplace Institute (IPSL) Climate Modeling Center; and Professor Rowan Sutton is director of climate research at UK National Center for Atmospheric Sciences (NCAS), Reading University. The first results of a new generation of global climate […]
Professor Stephen Belcher is Chief Scientist at UK Met Office; Doctor Olivier Boucher is at the head of Pierre Simon Laplace Institute (IPSL) Climate Modeling Center; and Professor Rowan Sutton is director of climate research at UK National Center for Atmospheric Sciences (NCAS), Reading University. The first results of a new generation of global climate […]
Many recent climate models have predicted disastrous global changes. The problem is that climate forecasters are currently ignoring decades of scientific best practices that would provide more accurate predictions. Fortunately, there are attempts to rectify the truly questionable methodology that has been used to make 21st century climate predictions. A significant new climate paper published […]
According to an international team of researchers from 17 countries. The results published last week in nature geoscience are based on observational evidence of three warm periods over the past 3.5 million years, when the world was 0.5°C to 2°C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures in the 19th century. The research has also revealed how large […]
Source: Geophysical Research Letters Mathematical models that simulate the Earth’s climate are essential for predicting future climate change. However, even today’s most sophisticated Earth system models suffer from uncertainties related to the difficulty of simulating small-scale or complex processes, such as the formation of raindrops and the uptake of carbon by plants. New IT tools […]
Designing climate experiments is nearly impossible in the real world. We cannot, for example, study the effects of clouds by removing all the clouds for a set period of time and seeing what happens. Instead, we have to design our experiments virtually, by developing computational models. Now a new open-source set of climate models has […]
Researchers at Princeton University have found that the climate models used by scientists to project the future conditions of our planet underestimate the cooling effect that clouds have on a daily or even hourly basis, especially on the ground. The researchers report in the journal Nature Communications that models tend to factor in too much […]
New research indicates we should pay more attention to climate patterns that point to a warmer future and reject projections that indicate less warming. The results, published on Wednesday in the review Naturesuggest that policymakers and international authorities rely on projections that underestimate global warming and, by extension, underestimate the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions […]
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — One size doesn’t always fit all, especially when it comes to global weather patterns, according to Penn State climate researchers. “The impacts of climate change rightly concern policy makers and stakeholders who need to make decisions about how to deal with climate change,” said Fuqing Zhangprofessor of meteorology and director, Center […]
For those of us who worry about global warming, two of the most critical questions we ask are, “how fast is the Earth warming?” and “how warm will it get in the future?”. The first question can be answered in several ways. For example, we can actually measure the rate of energy increase in the […]
Researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Yale University have found that climate patterns are aggressively making clouds “brighter” as the planet heats up. This can cause models to underestimate the amount of global warming that will occur due to increased carbon dioxide. The research appears in the April 8 edition of Science. As the […]
The Zachariae Isstrom glacier in northeast Greenland is shrinking at a rate that has surprised many scientists. The first thing to keep in mind is that after more than three decades, hundreds of millions of dollars, and countless hours of scientists invested, climate models have gotten much, much better. For example, scientists have learned to […]
Most people have a fairly clear position on human-induced climate change, even though the vast majority of people don’t know much about the scientific basis of the climate models used to study it. It’s understandable – they are indeed very complicated and not accessible to everyone. In a sense, it doesn’t matter if climate models […]
The future of climate modeling takes a lesson from Van Gogh’s paintings with an added dose of technicolor for good measure. Los Alamos National Laboratory released a simulation that captures the temperatures and currents of the world’s oceans in great detail. The image reveals ripples at 35 miles to 9 miles resolution, though researchers can […]
A new study led by Duke University finds that most climate models likely underestimate the degree of decade-to-decade variability in mean surface temperatures as Earth’s atmosphere warms. The models also provide inconsistent explanations for why this variability occurs in the first place. These discrepancies can undermine the reliability of models for projecting the short-term rate […]
Even with the latest climate models, temperature projections are full of uncertainties (bright areas around temperature curves for different scenarios). Credit: Josef Kuster, ETH Zurich / Knutti and Sedlacek 2012 Nature Climate Change / Galyna Andrushko, Fotolia (Phys.org)—How accurate are the latest generation of climate models? Climate physicist Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich has compared […]