The primary purpose of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) is to assess the available scientific knowledge about climate change, not to initiate new research. The next IPCC report (Assessment Report 4, or AR4) is due in 2007, and in order to update of the state of knowledge it will only consider papers published in peer-review scientific journals between 2000 and papers submitted by May 1st 2005 (must be accepted before December 2005). It is essential that the papers be published in scientific quality journals in order to ensure the credibility of the results. Nevertheless the IPCC reports undergo several additional reviews and revisions involving a large number of independent referees. Thus, the IPCC reports undergo a more stringent review process than common papers in the scientific literature.
IPCC
IPCC in action: Part I
This is the first of two pieces on the recent IPCC workshop in Hawaii, This brought together independent researchers from all over the world to analyse computer model simulations of the last 150 years and to assess whether they are actually any good.
Guest commentary from Natassa Romanou (Columbia University)
During the first 3 days of March 2005, balmy downtown Honolulu in Hawaii was buzzing with agile scientists conversing, chatting, announcing, briefing and informing about IPCC assessment reports, climate models, model evaluations, climate sensitivities and feedbacks. These were the participants of the Climate Model Evaluation Project workshop (CMEP) and came here from most (if not all) the major, most prestigious climate research laboratories of the world, including; The US labs National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the British Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, the German Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, the French Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques and the IPSL/LMD/LSCE, the Australian CSIRO Atmospheric Research, the Chinese Institute of Atmospheric Physics, the Russian Institute for Numerical Mathematics and the Japanese Meteorological Research Institute. This meeting was sponsored by the benevolent NSF, NOAA, NASA and DOE.
Climate model scenarios Les scénarios des modèles climatiques
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.
La plus grande incertitude dans ce qui va se passer pour le climat du futur (dans 30 ans ou plus) est le cours que va suivre l’économie globale et les changements technologiques qui peuvent l’accompagner. Puisque les climatologues n’ont certainement pas une boule de cristal, nous considérons généralement une gamme de scénarios ou de projections des émissions futures de CO 2 et d’autres forçages importants comme le méthane et les aérosols.
[Read more…] about Climate model scenarios