Yearly Archives: 2016

Reconciling estimates of climate sensitivity

climate sensitivity, GCMs, SSTs, temperature

Climate sensitivity characterises the response of the climate to changes in radiative forcing and can be measured in many different ways. However, estimates derived from observations of historical global temperatures have tended to be lower than those suggested by state-of-the-art climate simulators. Are the models too sensitive?

A new study largely explains the difference – it is because the comparison has not been done ‘like-with-like’.

The implications for understanding historical global temperature change are also significant. It is suggested that changes in global air temperature are actually ~24% larger than measured by the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset. Continue reading Reconciling estimates of climate sensitivity →

Slowdown discussion

observations, projections, temperature, variability

The temporary slowdown in global temperatures in the early-2000s is still prompting significant scientific discussion. A recent Commentary on the topic by Fyfe et al. was summarised in an earlier post. In response, a recent post by Rahmstorf et al. reiterates some of the statistical arguments that we discussed briefly in our Commentary1, but misses the main point. Continue reading Slowdown discussion →

Observing long-term climatic changes with unusual sources

history, observations, variability

We are all familiar with the usual metrics used to highlight that the climate is changing: surface air temperatures, sea level, sea surface temperatures and ocean heat content all rising, glaciers retreating, Arctic sea ice declining etc. But, there are also many other less well known sources of information about how our climate is changing, and many involve ‘citizen scientists’, who often didn’t realise the potential long-term benefits of the data they were collecting. Continue reading Observing long-term climatic changes with unusual sources →