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Interesting Article in Nature and looks like better news (as opposed to doom and gloom) things may not be as bad as previously predicted. It will be interesting to follow further research as we gain more data and produce more accurate climate predictions.
Unfortunately, the article itself is behind a paywall, but addresses the inaccuracies of prior climate models.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25450
Not a huge fan of Science Daily, but for those without access to the full Nature article, it has explanations of the data from the paper's authors.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180117131132.htm
Emergent constraint on equilibrium climate sensitivity from global temperature variability
Abstract
Equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) remains one of the most important unknowns in climate change science. ECS is defined as the global mean warming that would occur if the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration were instantly doubled and the climate were then brought to equilibrium with that new level of CO2. Despite its rather idealized definition, ECS has continuing relevance for international climate change agreements, which are often framed in terms of stabilization of global warming relative to the pre-industrial climate. However, the ‘likely’ range of ECS as stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has remained at 1.5–4.5 degrees Celsius for more than 25 years1. The possibility of a value of ECS towards the upper end of this range reduces the feasibility of avoiding 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, as required by the Paris Agreement. Here we present a new emergent constraint on ECS that yields a central estimate of 2.8 degrees Celsius with 66 per cent confidence limits (equivalent to the IPCC ‘likely’ range) of 2.2–3.4 degrees Celsius. Our approach is to focus on the variability of temperature about long-term historical warming, rather than on the warming trend itself. We use an ensemble of climate models to define an emergent relationship2between ECS and a theoretically informed metric of global temperature variability. This metric of variability can also be calculated from observational records of global warming3, which enables tighter constraints to be placed on ECS, reducing the probability of ECS being less than 1.5 degrees Celsius to less than 3 per cent, and the probability of ECS exceeding 4.5 degrees Celsius to less than 1 per cent.
Unfortunately, the article itself is behind a paywall, but addresses the inaccuracies of prior climate models.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25450
Not a huge fan of Science Daily, but for those without access to the full Nature article, it has explanations of the data from the paper's authors.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180117131132.htm
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