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New Climate Simulations Shock Science World

by Noah's Ark | Feb 5, 2020 | Global, Climate Change | 0 comments

If the planet warmed by about 3° Celsius it would be disastrous with floods, farming breakdowns, killer heat.

2019 scientists noticed some of the climate simulation models started running very hot with some projections rising in excess of 5°C. The scientists running the simulations couldn’t agree on what was causing it or if they should be trusted but the they are working with real data so we can form our own judgements on this story.

Andrew Gettelman, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, which builds a high-profile climate model, spoke of confusion within the group of scientists as they compared results from their individual tests.

“The question is whether they’ve overshot,” said Mark Zelinka, staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Researchers are starting to put together answers on the recent Australian bush fires, a task that will take months maybe longer, and there’s not yet agreement on how to interpret the rising temperatures. The concern is these models have successfully projected global warming for a half century.

The simulations continue to frame all major scientific, policy and private-sector climate goals and debates, including the sixth encyclopedic assessment by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due out next year. If the same amount of climate pollution will bring faster warming than formerly assessed, humanity has less time to until the worst climate crisis activity starts manifesting on Earth.

The model run by NCAR, one of American’s foremost climate-science institutions, began producing unusual data in 2019 while trying to reproduce the recent past. “We got some really strange results,” Gettelman said.

The scientists went on to try 300 configurations of rain, pollution, and heat flows—something they can do as gods of their own digital earth—before matching the model to history. But by solving that puzzle, Gettelman’s team sent future projections upward at an unheard-of rate. NCAR found that CO₂ doubling would lead to 5.3°C world, a 33% jump from the model’s past reading on global warming.

Soon there were multiple teams at other institutions putting out new climate-sensitivity numbers that looked like worst-case scenarios on steroids. The Met Office Hadley Center, the U.K.’s main research group, found a doubling of CO₂ would deliver 5.5°C warming. A team at the U.S. Department of Energy ended up with 5.3°C, and the Canadian model topped out at 5.6°C. France’s National Center for Meteorological Research saw its estimate jump to 4.9°C from 3.3°C.

11,000 Scientists Announce Climate Emergency

by Noah's Ark | Nov 7, 2019 | Climate Change | 0 comments

Eleven thousand scientists in 153 countries say “untold human suffering” will happen unless we change our way of life. They declared this climate emergency in a letter based on climate science established in 1979 at the first world climate conference in Geneva.

Since the first conference world leaders agreed with the experts whilst protestors and school children have marched, lobbied and created a sense of awareness but the issues with our eco system are getting worse.

“Despite 40 years of major global negotiations, we have continued to conduct business as usual and have failed to address this crisis,” said William Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University, who has motivated the letter.

“Climate change has arrived and is accelerating faster than many scientists expected,” says the letter.

The scientists say they have a duty to “clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat” and “tell it like it is”. “Clearly and unequivocally planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” they say.

Lead author, Dr Thomas Newsome from the University of Sydney, said measuring global surface temperatures remained important but that a broader set of indicators should be monitored.

This includes “human population growth, meat consumption, tree-cover loss, energy consumption, fossil-fuel subsidies and annual economic losses to extreme weather events”, he said.

“While things are bad, all is not hopeless. We can take steps to address the climate emergency,” he said. “Such swift action is our best hope to sustain life on planet Earth, our only home.”

The Noah’s Ark Foundation in South Africa supports the letter. Founders Richard & Hein Prinsloo Curson say “Animals and plants have and an equally important role in Earth’s eco system. We forget every living thing on the planet is part of our precious and fragile circle of life and without one element the circle is broken and everything is affected”. They say “Bees are just one tiny example as they face rapid decline and if they become extinct plants cant pollenate which has severe consequences on the eco system including climate change”.