Using past decadal temperature changes to understand present and future climate

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Dr Andrew Schurer, University of Edinburgh
• Monday 06 November 2017, 14:15-15:15
• Pfizer Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Anja Schmidt.

The climate of the past millennium was marked by substantial decadal variability. Model simulations can be used to attribute this decadal variability to both external forcings and internal variability; where external forcings include anthropogenic drivers of climate change in addition to natural forcings such as solar fluctuations and volcanic eruptions. In this talk I will present results from an analysis of the last millennium which found an important role for volcanic eruptions and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations but found that the effect of solar variations was likely small. This talk will also discuss the recent “hiatus” period, placing it in the context of this long term decadal variability. Finally I will discuss how last millennium climate simulations can be used to calculate an estimate of pre-industrial global temperature. This is important because at the Paris climate conference 2015, nations agreed to holding increases to well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees. Given that in this context the “pre-industrial” baseline was not defined I will show the implications on the likelihoods of temperatures exceeding these two thresholds given different assumptions about pre-industrial temperature levels.

This talk is part of the Centre for Atmospheric Science seminars, Chemistry Dept. series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• CamBridgeSens
• Cambridge Environment
• Cambridge talks
• Centre for Atmospheric Science seminars, Chemistry Dept.
• Climate Science Seminars within Cambridge
• Department of Chemistry
• Featured lists
• LCLU Departmental Talks
• Life Science Interface Seminars
• Pfizer Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry
• Queens' College Politics Society
• School of Physical Sciences
• Talks related to atmosphere and ocean dynamics and climate science
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.