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On the Reprocessing and Reanalysis of Observations for Climate
The long observational record is critical to our understanding of the Earth’s climate, but most observing systems were not developed with a climate objective in mind. As a result, tremendous efforts have gone into assessing and reprocessing the data records to improve their usefulness in climate studies. Many challenges remain, such as tracking the improvement of processing algorithms. Reanalyses have fostered significant research, yet reliable global trends in many physical fields are not yet attainable, despite significant advances in data assimilation and numerical modeling. Communication o ...
Challenges in Estimating and Understanding Recent Changes in the Frequency and Intensity of Extreme Climate and Weather Events
This paper briefly reviews some aspects of the current status of research on changes in climate extremes, identifying gaps and issues that warrant additional work. This paper focuses primarily on the historical instrumental record, giving a sense of the nature of the results that have been obtained, challenges that arise from observational, methodological and climate modelling uncertainties and discussing the extent to which detection and attribution research has been able to link observed changes to external forcing of the climate system. It also very briefly discusses projections for the 21s ...
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Prediction from Weeks to Decades
This white paper is a synthesis of several recent workshops, reports and published literature: (Smith et al., 2011; Anderson et al. 2011; Weller et al. 2010; Meehl et al. 2009; Hurrell et al. 2009; Shukla et al. 2010 and Brunet et al. 2010). The intent is to document: (i) the scientific basis for prediction from weeks to decades; (ii) current capabilities; and (iii) outstanding challenges. We focus on time--‐scales from beyond the time scale of deterministic weather (i.e., sub--‐seasonal) to decadal.
Carbon Dioxide and Climate : perspectives on a Scientific Assessment
Many of the findings of the Charney Report on CO2 induced climate change (1979) are still valid, despite 30 additional years of climate research and observations. This paper considers the reasons why the report was so prescient, and assesses the progress achieved since its publication. We suggest that emphasis on the importance of physical understanding gained through the use of theory and simple models, both in isolation and as an aid in the interpretation of the results of General Circulation Models, provided much of the authors’ insight at the time. Increased emphasis on these aspects of re ...
Atmospheric Composition Irreversible Climate Change and Mitigation Policy
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) ; Pierrehumbert Raymond T.; Matthews D.L.; et al. - WMO, 2011The Earth’s atmosphere is changing due to anthropogenic increases of a range of gases and aerosols that influence the planetary energy budget. Policy has long been challenged to ensure that instruments such as the Kyoto Protocol or carbon trading deal with the wide range of lifetimes of these radiative forcing agents. Recent research has sharpened scientific understanding of the differences between various metrics used to compare emissions of different gases; as a result, there has been an improved understanding of how climate system time scales interact with the time scales of the forcing age ...
Building Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change in less Developed Countries
Around the world, the devastation of climate--‐related impacts has undermined livelihoods, threatened ecosystems, and stretched the capacity of sociopolitical institutions. Droughts, storms, and floods have often caused serious agricultural losses and human suffering: images of famines in Africa, human displacement in the Caribbean, and water--‐covered settlements in Bangladesh illustrate just some of the disastrous impacts of climate on vulnerable populations. In recent years, the possibility of more frequent and extreme events as a result of climate change has fueled new avenues of inquiry t ...
Challenges of a Sustained Climate Observing System
Observations of planet Earth and especially all climate system components and forcings are increasingly needed for planning and decision making related to climate services in the broadest sense. Although significant progress has been made, much more remains to be done before a fully functional climate observing system exists. Observations are needed on all spatial scales from local to global, and all time scales, especially to understand and document changes in extremes. Climate change from human activities adds both a new dimension and an imperative: to acquire climate observations of suffici ...
Attribution of Weather and Climate-Related Extreme Events
Unusual or extreme weather and climate-related events are of great public concern and interest, yet there are often conflicting messages from scientists about whether such events can be linked to climate change. There is clear evidence that climate has changed as a result of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, and that across the globe some aspects of extremes have changed as a result. But this does not imply that the probability of occurrence (or, given a fixed damage, risk) of a specific type of recently observed weather or climate event has changed significantly as a result of human in ...
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