• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

RealClimate

Climate science from climate scientists...

  • Home
  • Start here
  • Contributors
  • Archives
You are here: Home / Archives for Climate Science / Climate modelling

Climate modelling

Senator Inhofe on Climate Change

10 Jan 2005 by group

by Michael Mann, Stefan Rahmstorf, Gavin Schmidt, Eric Steig, and William Connolley

Senator James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma recently provided us with an update of his views on the issue of climate change in a speech given on the opening senate session, January 4, 2005. His speech opened with the statement:

As I said on the Senate floor on July 28, 2003, “much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.” I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” a statement that, to put it mildly, was not viewed kindly by environmental extremists and their elitist organizations.

Cutting through much of his polemic, Inhofe’s speech contains three lines of scientific argument which, according to him, provide “compelling new scientific evidence” that anthropogenic global warming is not threatening. We here submit his statements to scrutiny.
[Read more…] about Senator Inhofe on Climate Change

Filed Under: Arctic and Antarctic, Climate modelling, Climate Science, Greenhouse gases, Paleoclimate

Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion II: Return of the Science

15 Dec 2004 by mike

Our first post on Crichton’s new novel “State of Fear” hits most of the key points, though there are a few more errors in the book that we hope to expand upon in future posts.

But for those of you uninterested in buying and reading the book, you can actually find a similar-minded opinion piece by Crichton criticizing climate science (and everything from SETI and the “Drake Equation” to Carl Sagan in the process) here in the public domain.

[Read more…] about Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion II: Return of the Science

Filed Under: Climate modelling, Climate Science, Greenhouse gases, Instrumental Record

Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion

13 Dec 2004 by Gavin

Translations: (Français)

In a departure from normal practice on this site, this post is a commentary on a piece of out-and-out fiction (unlike most of the other posts which deal with a more subtle kind). Michael Crichton’s new novel “State of Fear” is about a self-important NGO hyping the science of the global warming to further the ends of evil eco-terrorists. The inevitable conclusion of the book is that global warming is a non-problem. A lesson for our times maybe? Unfortunately, I think not.

[Read more…] about Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion

Filed Under: Arctic and Antarctic, Climate modelling, Climate Science, Greenhouse gases, Instrumental Record, Reviews

The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment III

5 Dec 2004 by Gavin

Does the ACIA overstate the problem of ozone depletion? The overview report states that the “stratospheric ozone layer over the Arctic is not expected to improve significantly for at least a few decades”. This is partly because CFC concentrations (that enhance stratospheric ozone destruction) are only expected to decrease slowly as a function of restrictions imposed by the Montreal Protocol and subsequent amendments. Another factor is the fact that stratospheric temperatures are generally cooling as greenhouse gases increase (see MSU Temperature Record, also Why does the stratosphere cool when the troposphere warms?). Due to the temperature dependence on the rates of chemical reactions involving ozone, cooler temperatures also lead to more ozone destruction. Stratospheric temperatures, particularly near the pole are also significantly influenced by dynamical changes, and in particular, the strength of the [Read more…] about The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment III

Filed Under: Arctic and Antarctic, Climate modelling, Climate Science

Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and the so-called "Hockey Stick"

4 Dec 2004 by mike

Translations: (Français)

Instrumental data describing large-scale surface temperature changes are only available for roughly the past 150 years. Estimates of surface temperature changes further back in time must therefore make use of the few long available instrumental records or historical documents and natural archives or ‘climate proxy’ indicators, such as tree rings, corals, ice cores and lake sediments, and historical documents to reconstruct patterns of past surface temperature change. Due to the paucity of data in the Southern Hemisphere, recent studies have emphasized the reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere (NH) mean, rather than global mean temperatures over roughly the past 1000 years.

[Read more…] about Temperature Variations in Past Centuries and the so-called "Hockey Stick"

Filed Under: Climate modelling, Climate Science, Greenhouse gases, Paleoclimate, Sun-earth connections

Antarctic cooling, global warming?

3 Dec 2004 by Gavin

Translations: (Français)

by Eric Steig and Gavin Schmidt
Long term temperature data from the Southern Hemisphere are hard to find, and by the time you get to the Antarctic continent, the data are extremely sparse. Nonetheless, some patterns do emerge from the limited data available. The Antarctic Peninsula, site of the now-defunct Larsen-B ice shelf, has warmed substantially. On the other hand, the few stations on the continent and in the interior appear to have cooled slightly (Doran et al, 2002; GISTEMP). At first glance this seems to contradict the idea of “global” warming, but one needs to be careful before jumping to this conclusion.

[Read more…] about Antarctic cooling, global warming?

Filed Under: Arctic and Antarctic, Climate modelling, Climate Science, Greenhouse gases

Michaels misquotes Hansen

2 Dec 2004 by Gavin

Pat Michaels (under the guise of the Greening Earth society) is particularly fond of misquoting Jim Hansen, director of the NASA GISS laboratory (and in the interests of full disclosure, GS’s boss).

Recently he claimed that Dr. Hansen has now come around to the ‘skeptics’ (i.e. Pat Michaels) way of thinking and suggests that they agree on the (small) amount of warming to be expected in the future. Michaels quotes Hansen from a 2001 PNAS paper:

[Read more…] about Michaels misquotes Hansen

Filed Under: Climate modelling, Greenhouse gases

Climate model scenarios

1 Dec 2004 by Gavin

Translations: (Français)

A couple of commentators (Pat Michaels, Roy Spencer) recently raised an issue about the standard scenarios used to compare climate models, in this case related to a study on the potential increase in hurricane activity.

The biggest uncertainty in what will happen to climate in the future (say 30 years or more) is the course that the global economy will take and the changes in technology that may accompany that. Since climate scientists certainly don’t have a crystal ball, we generally take a range of scenarios or projections of future emissions of CO2 and other important forcings such as methane and aerosols.

[Read more…] about Climate model scenarios

Filed Under: Climate modelling, Climate Science, Greenhouse gases, IPCC

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 19
  • Go to page 20
  • Go to page 21

Primary Sidebar

Email Notification

get new posts sent to you automatically (free)
Loading

Recent Posts

  • Some new CMIP6 MSU comparisons
  • How not to science
  • Unforced variations: March 2023
  • The established ground and new ideas
  • 2022 updates to model-observation comparisons
  • Unforced variations: Feb 2023

Our Books

Book covers
This list of books since 2005 (in reverse chronological order) that we have been involved in, accompanied by the publisher’s official description, and some comments of independent reviewers of the work.
All Books >>

Recent Comments

  • b fagan on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • Geoff Miell on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • Piotr on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • Piotr on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • Carbomontanus on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • Carbomontanus on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • nigelj on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • JCM on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • JCM on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • Victor on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • Carbomontanus on Unforced variations: March 2023
  • macias shurly on Some new CMIP6 MSU comparisons

Footer

ABOUT

  • About
  • Translations
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Page
  • Login

DATA

  • Data Sources
  • Climate model projections compared to observations

INDEX

  • Acronym index
  • Index

Realclimate Stats

1,296 posts

8 pages

230,051 comments

Copyright © 2023 · RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists.