Latest Climate model Stories
NEW YORK -- An important wind circulation pattern over the Pacific Ocean has begun to weaken because of global warming caused by human activity, something that could alter climate and the marine food chain in the region, new research suggests. It's not clear what climate changes might arise in the area or possibly beyond, but the long-term effect might resemble some aspects of an El Nino event, a study author said. El Ninos boost rainfall in the southern United States and western South...
WASHINGTON -- A nagging difference in temperature readings that had raised questions about global warming has been resolved, a panel of scientists reported Tuesday."This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected," researchers said in the first of 21 assessment reports planned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.The findings show clear evidence of human influences on climate due to changes in...
NASA -- Scientists from NASA and Columbia University, New York, have used computer modeling to successfully reproduce an abrupt climate change that took place 8,200 years ago. At that time, the beginning of the current warm period, climate changes were caused by a massive flood of freshwater into the North Atlantic Ocean. This work is the first to consistently recreate the event by computer modeling, and the first time that the model results have been confirmed by comparison to the climate...
BOULDER - Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have created a computer simulation showing Earth's climate in unprecedented detail at the time of the greatest mass extinction in the planet's history. The work gives support to a theory that an abrupt and dramatic rise in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide triggered the massive die-off 251 million years ago. The research appears in the September issue of Geology."The results demonstrate how rapidly rising...
LIVERMORE, Calif. "“ For the first time, new climate observations and computer models provide a consistent picture of recent warming of the tropical atmosphere.Over the past decade, scientific evidence from a variety of sources has implicated human-caused increases in greenhouse gases as a major driver of recent climate change. A key argument used to rebut such findings relates to satellite records of temperature change in the troposphere "“ the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. Until...
NASA -- "It's a match!" For detectives in a crime story, identical fingerprints or cloth fibers might solve the case. For scientists, it could be something equally dramatic. It might be real-life observations that match the simulations of their computer models. Such a match would provide evidence that they understand enough about a complex system to be able to understand its past behavior and perhaps anticipate its future behavior. For researchers studying climate change, the proof...
NASA satellites improve understanding of urban effects on climate and weatherNASA -- Just how does society's desire to live in densely populated areas have the potential to change our Earth's climate? According to a new paper, satellites can help us answer that question. "More and more people live in cities. This means that cities will grow rapidly over the next several decades. Evidence continues to mount that cities affect the climate," said J. Marshall Shepherd, Deputy Project...
NASA -- Researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and several other government and academic institutions have created four new supercomputer simulations that for the first time combine their mathematical computer models of the atmosphere, ocean, land surface and sea ice. These simulations are the first field tests of the new Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF), an innovative software system that promises to improve and accelerate U.S. predictive capability ranging from...
PT. REYES STATION, CALIF. -- Scientists sponsored by the Department of Energy are conducting a six-month atmospheric research campaign at the Point Reyes National Seashore, in Marin County, California. The experiment's goal is to help researchers understand how aerosols --small particles such as soot, dust and smoke--influence the structure of marine stratus clouds, and how aerosols are associated with drizzle "“ the misty rain regularly produced by these types of clouds. The scientists...
NEW YORK (AP) -- Climate scientists armed with new data from deep in the ocean and far into space have found that Earth is absorbing much more heat than it is giving off, a conclusion they say validates projections of global warming. Lead scientist James Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist, described the findings on the planet's out-of-balance energy exchange as a "smoking gun" that should dispel doubts about forecasts of climate change. A European climate expert called it a...
