Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

The shape of things to come: what are the limits to global climate predictions?

Gerard Roe

Department of Earth and Space Sciences
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

Predictions of future climate matter, and are being keenly sought in order to prepare societal strategies to cope and adapt. Climate modelers are challenged to make quantitative predictions about a natural system of irreducible complexity. It is perhaps puzzling that despite 30 years of intensive research into global climate change, uncertainty in the long-term response of global temperature to a doubling of carbon dioxide has not narrowed very much. Why is this, and does it portend a limit to our ability to model and predict global climate? Earth's climate is a complicated system of interacting sub-components, and the net effect is that of a positive feedback loop. I will demonstrate that uncertainty is intrinsic in models of such systems, and that even if our computer climate simulations improve considerably over their current status, it is unlikely that in the foreseeable future climate scientists will be able to rule-out the possibility of very large climate changes.

In the face of this certain uncertainty, retaining flexibility over future emissions scenarios is key.

About the Lecturer
Gerard Roe is an associate professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, and was educated at the University of Oxford and MIT. Research interests include climate dynamics, glaciology, and mountain building.

More Information
http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/

Gerard Roe