Appendix D Limitations and Problems with Existing Climate Data and Modeling

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: glacier; glaciers; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.401.4546; http://www.nrwa.org/benefits/whitepapers/2010_Update/Appendix D Problems with Climate Models - Final.pdf

This Appendix provides a brief discussion of limitations and problems that have been raised with existing climate data and modeling. These limitations are also important to the work of the IPCC but are not necessarily directly cited in the IPCC 2007 written reports. Only representative literature citations and peer-reviewed references are included. This list, presented in alphabetical order, is not intended to be comprehensive. (Also see Appendix C.) Alaska Glaciers – For many years environmental advocacy groups such as the World Wildlife Fund have claimed that glaciers are melting worldwide at an alarming rate due to global warming (World Wildlife Fund 2005). Computer models used to predict future warming rely on data such as glacier loss. A peer-reviewed study of Alaska glaciers published January 17, 2010, found that previous studies largely overestimated by 40 percent Alaskan glacier loss for 40 years (Berthier et al. 2010). Reasons for these lower values were attributed to the higher spatial resolution of the glacier inventory as well as the reduction of ice thinning underneath debris and at the glacier margins. Such factors were not resolved in earlier studies. Berthier et al. (2010) suggest that the estimates of mass loss from glaciers and ice caps in other mountain regions could be subject to similar downward revisions.