Blog # 8 Global warming predictions prove accurate

The future of global warming may be more predictable than originally thought. According to the article in ‘the Guardian’ the forecasts of global temperature has risen over the past 15 years. The numbers have proved to be remarkably accurate. The discussion around the accuracy of climate modeling and forecasting has been especially intense recent news, due to suggestions that forecasts have exaggerated the warming observed so far – and therefore also the level warming that can be expected in the future. The new research excludes serious doubts on these claims, and should give credibility in scientific predictions of the climate changing. The paper, published on this past Wednesday in the journal “Nature Geosciences” explores the predictions of climate change forecast based on data from 1996 by comparing to the actual temperatures observed since then. The results show that scientists accurately predicted the warming that we as a world have experienced in the past decade, so close that the predictions have been relative to the decade to 1996, within a few hundredths of a degree. In the forecast, published in 1999 by Myles Allen and colleagues at Oxford University, the research happened to be one of the first to combine complex computer simulations of the climate system with changes based on historical recordings to produce both a likely global mean warming and a range of unknown. The research found that the decade ending in December 2012 would be a quarter of degree warmer than the decade ending in August 1996 – and the results proved almost precisely correct. The new research also found that, compared to the past forecasts, the early years of the 2000’s were somewhat warmer than they were expected to be. In conjunction with the recordings more recently the temperature has matched the level forecasted very closely.

Very similar to the discussions we have had in class in regards to population control and the effects population could linked to what we as a world have experienced. Global Warming such as population growth can be mitigated or solved when great minds to come together. In the video we watched with Hans Rosling, A world without any guidance or resources will most definitely fail. There needs to be a leader just as Rosling said, the western world needs to be the foundation for we should have and what the standard should be to prevent the warming, and the rest of the world will follow if the results are promising.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/27/climate-change-model-global-warming

 

Chris Roberts

29 March 2013

1:55pm