Why climate science needs to learn from risk assessment
Climate scientists need to spend more time considering all plausible future climate scenarios rather than just the most likely, argues Professor Rowan Sutton in a new paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Professor Sutton, Director of Climate Science at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, says that scientists have not paid enough attention to two important issues; the current risks due to climate change, and the low-likelihood high-impact events which carry the highest risks.
Methane measurements in the Arctic Circle may be critical to controlling global temperature rise
A team of researchers are working to uncover the causes of a mysterious rise in atmospheric methane, which threatens to derail plans to limit global temperature rise.
Their latest measurement campaign took place in the Arctic Circle, where researchers have identified that melting permafrosts are one potential source of increasing methane emissions.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and emissions have been rising rapidly over the last ten years. Its warming effect on our climate is around 34 times greater than carbon dioxide over a one hundred year period.
Taking a closer look at Europe’s future winters
Wetter winters across northern Europe and drier winters across southern Europe are expected towards the end of this century. But the scale of these changes may be underestimated by some climate models, which currently operate at low-resolutions.
Tests using a higher-resolution climate model, which has the ability to take a closer look and capture weather-scale processes, shows stronger and more reliable changes in winter with climate change.
NCAS supports biggest ever Arctic research expedition
The Arctic is a region of great sensitivity to climate change and is warming twice as fast as other regions on Earth. UK research teams have joined the first ever year-round expedition into the central Arctic Ocean, to undertake ground-breaking studies into the Arctic climate system during the middle of the polar night.
The expedition, called The Multi-Disciplinary drifting Observatory for the study of Arctic Climate programme (MOSAiC), will see the German research icebreaker RV Polarstern frozen into the Arctic sea ice and then drift across the top of the Arctic Ocean.