New study out this week looked at the physics of how clouds are represented in climate models, and concluded that the climate may be more sensitive to warming than previously thought.
Important to know that every year studies come out with implications for a higher, as well as possibly a lower, climate sensitivity. Over the last century, science has kept returning very closely to the “canonical” 3 ° C plus or minus 1.5°.
This study is important, but does not by itself reset the bar. More information needed, but as Mike Mann points out, uncertainty is not a reason to put off mitigation. The uncertainties, he says, “..may be breaking against us.”
See more discussion here. Andy Dessler on Clouds below.
Sounds pretty desperate.
Yes it does sound “desperate”, doesn’t it?. Are you finally starting to understand how desperate the situation may really be? All those “uncertainties may be breaking against us”? Can you give us an example of a SINGLE uncertainty about climate change that has broken FOR us? I can think of only a very few, and they’re small in impact.
There is hope:
http://www.theonion.com/article/scientists-slowly-reintroducing-small-group-normal-52632
We can always count on The Onion to report all the news that’s fit to report in a fair and balanced way. Unfortunately, this small bit of good news is diminished by the very last line in the article—-to wit:
“Top researchers confirmed that it was already far too late to halt the country’s dominant breed of humans—assholes—from spreading uncontrollably to every region on earth”.
As several people have pointed out (http://julesandjames.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/climate-sensitivity-is-53c.html)
this new high end estimate of ECS does not comport well with historical evidence. IOW, it seems to be too high.
Yes, “several people” are indeed engaging in useless navel-gazing about which numbers are more valid in a set of numbers that are all so high that they spell DISASTER, and they are doing that rather than getting busy with more research that will help to settle the issue. I am reminded of all the models and “studies” where the results have turned out to be too low. Time will tell on this one.
If I recall correctly, even if you shift the ECS mean a bit downward, the probability curve is biased toward a very long tail in the plus direction, with a very abrupt and tiny tail in the negative direction. That’s why almost all climate scientists that work to constrain the models will tell you that uncertainty is not our friend when it comes to AGW.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Climate_Sensitivity_500.jpg
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/RoeBaker.jpg