Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Climate models are seen by many to be unverifiable. However, near-term climate predictions up to 10 years into the future carried out recently with these models can be rigorously verified against observations. Near-term climate prediction is a new information tool for the climate adaptation and service communities, which often make decisions on near-term time scales, and for which the most basic information is unfortunately very scarce. The Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project set of co-ordinated climate-model experiments includes a set of near-term predictions in which several modelling groups participated and whose forecast quality we illustrate here. We show that climate forecast systems have skill in predicting the Earth’s temperature at regional scales over the past 50 years and illustrate the trustworthiness of their predictions. Most of the skill can be attributed to changes in atmospheric composition, but also partly to the initialization of the predictions. Near-term climate prediction is an information tool used in climate adaptation services. This study analyses the quality of the predictions, showing that near-term climate forecasts have good skill in predicting temperature at regional scales, where most of the skill is attributed to atmospheric composition changes.
Source: Nature Communications
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2704
Institutions: Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Institut Català de Ciències del Clima, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, University of Hawaii System, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, The University of Tokyo, Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $6,990
OpenAlex ID: W2121303799