Monthly Archives: March 2019

Why climate predictions are so difficult

Posted on March 30, 2019 by | 110 comments

by Judith Curry

An insightful interview with Bjorn Stevens.

Continue reading →

110 Comments

Posted in climate models, Prediction, Sensitivity & feedbacks

What’s the worst case? Emissions/concentration scenarios

Posted on March 28, 2019 by | 98 comments

by Judith Curry

Is the RCP8.5 scenario plausible?

Continue reading →

98 Comments

Posted in Prediction

What’s the worst case? A possibilistic approach

Posted on March 27, 2019 by | 141 comments

by Judith Curry

Are all of the ‘worst-case’ climate scenarios and outcomes described in assessment reports, journal publications and the media plausible? Are some of these outcomes impossible? On the other hand, are there unexplored worst-case scenarios that we have missed, that could turn out to be real outcomes? Are there too many unknowns for us to have confidence that we have credibly identified the worst case? What threshold of plausibility or credibility should be used when assessing these extreme scenarios for policy making and risk management?

Continue reading →

141 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Why I don’t ‘believe’ in ‘science’

Posted on March 26, 2019 by | 153 comments

by Judith Curry

” ‘I believe in science’ is an homage given to science by people who generally don’t understand much about it. Science is used here not to describe specific methods or theories, but to provide a badge of tribal identity.  Which serves, ironically, to demonstrate a lack of interest in the guiding principles of actual science.” – Robert Tracinski

Continue reading →

153 Comments

Posted in Sociology of science

Four fronts for climate policy

Posted on March 25, 2019 by | 102 comments

by Judith Curry

“For decades, scientists and policymakers have framed the climate-policy debate in a simple way: scientists analyse long-term goals, and policymakers pretend to honour them. Those days are over. Serious climate policy must focus more on the near-term and on feasibility.” – Y. Xu, V. Ramanathan, D. Victor

Continue reading →

102 Comments

Posted in Policy

Climate sensitivity calculator app

Posted on March 18, 2019 by | 132 comments

by Alberto Zaragoza Comendador

How sensitive is the Earth’s climate to greenhouse gases? Speaking about carbon dioxide in particular, how much would air temperatures increase if we doubled atmospheric concentrations of said gas?

Continue reading →

132 Comments

Posted in Sensitivity & feedbacks

Hurricanes & climate change: 21st century projections

Posted on March 11, 2019 by | 62 comments

by Judith Curry

Final installment in my series on hurricanes and climate change.

Continue reading →

62 Comments

Posted in Hurricanes

Solar input to high latitudes and the global ice volume

Posted on March 7, 2019 by | 141 comments

by Donald Rapp, Ralf Ellis and Clive Best

A review of the relationship between the solar input to high latitudes and the global ice volume over the past 2.7 million years.

Continue reading →

141 Comments

Posted in Polar regions

Hurricanes & climate change: recent U.S. landfalling hurricanes

Posted on March 4, 2019 by | 64 comments

by Judith Curry

An assessment of whether any of the impacts of recent  U.S. landfalling hurricanes were exacerbated by global warming.

Continue reading →

64 Comments

Posted in Hurricanes

Critique of the new Santer et al. (2019) paper

Posted on March 1, 2019 by | 124 comments

by Ross McKitrick

Ben Santer et al. have a new paper out in Nature Climate Change arguing that with 40 years of satellite data available they can detect the anthropogenic influence in the mid-troposphere at a 5-sigma level of confidence. This, they point out, is the “gold standard” of proof in particle physics, even invoking for comparison the Higgs boson discovery in their Supplementary information.

Continue reading →

124 Comments

Posted in Attribution