Climate variability

Climate variability will increase in the 21st century • Earth.com


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A new study published in the journal Earth system dynamics explored predicted future changes in climate and ecosystem variability. Scientists have found that in addition to causing changes in average temperatures and precipitation levels, global warming will also trigger the onset of more pronounced extreme weather events during the 21st century, ranging from mighty storms to scorching forest fires.

A research team led by the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan ​​National University in South Korea and Community land system model (CESM) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the United States conducted a set of 100 model simulations of the global earth system to assess the impact of anthropogenic climate change during the period 1850 to 2100.

The calculated simulations were subjected to different initial conditions and were performed on the IBS Aleph supercomputer, one of the most powerful computers in the world. To run these simulations, over 80 million hours of supercomputer time were used and five petabytes of disk space (the equivalent of about 5,000 normal hard drives) were required to store the output model.

The results suggest that the impact of climate change is apparent in almost all aspects of climate variability, ranging from precipitation and temperature extremes to increasing number of forest fires and changes in the magnitude of the proliferation of the forest. phytoplankton from the North Atlantic Ocean. According to scientists, extreme events are expected to become more frequent in many regions, across a wide range of climatic and ecosystem variables.

“In addition to large-scale changes in extreme events, our study also identified large-scale changes in the seasonal cycle structure during the 21st century, showing an increased growing season length over mainland areas north of 50 ° N, ”said the study’s first author, Dr Keith Rodgers, senior investigator at the ICCP. Due to warming in the average condition and changes in the timing of advancing and retreating winter snow cover, by the end of this century, the length of the growing season is expected to increase by three weeks.

This vast study has already motivated more specialized investigations using the enormous volume of data collected from the simulations, on subjects such as hydrological changes affecting the water supply or the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems. According to study co-author Dr Gokhan Danabasoglu, “an important step forward will be to more fully identify potential societal impacts and communicate the implications for adaptation strategies.”

Through Andrei Ionescu, Terre.com Editor-in-chief

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