Insensitive climate models
Nature Geoscience
June 27, 2011

State-of-the-art climate models, as used in the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, could be giving a false sense of security in terms of upcoming abrupt change, suggests a Commentary online this week in Nature Geoscience.
Paul Valdes discusses four examples of abrupt climate change spanning the past 55 million years that have been reconstructed from palaeoclimate data. In two of the cases, complex climate models used in the assessments of future climate change did not adequately simulate the conditions before the onset of change. In the other two cases, the models needed an unrealistically strong push to produce a change similar to that observed in records of past climate.
The author concludes that state-of-the-art climate models may be systematically underestimating the potential for sudden climate change.
doi: 10.1038/ngeo1200
Research highlights
-
Jan 22
Palaeontology: Fossil burrows point to colonization of ancient seafloor by giant marine wormsScientific Reports
-
Jan 21
Climate change: Lake heatwaves likely to increase by 2100Nature
-
Jan 15
Environment: Seagrass meadows may facilitate marine plastic removal from the seaScientific Reports
-
Jan 15
Planetary Science: Mercury may have shrunk less than previously thoughtCommunications Earth&Environment
-
Jan 13
Environment: Polyester fibres found to be widespread in the ArcticNature Communications
-
Dec 23
Planetary science: Over 100,000 new craters identified on the MoonNature Communications