A Global Repository for Planet-Sized Experiments and Observations
Greenland’s ice loss doubled between 1996 and 2005. Nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. Carbon dioxide levels in the air are at their highest in 650,000 years. Are these phenomena related, and if so, what can they tell us about the Earth’s climate in the coming years an...
| Published in: | Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1560112 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1560112 https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00132.1 |
| Summary: | Greenland’s ice loss doubled between 1996 and 2005. Nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. Carbon dioxide levels in the air are at their highest in 650,000 years. Are these phenomena related, and if so, what can they tell us about the Earth’s climate in the coming years and decades? The answer will require sophisticated computer models—and a way of dealing with the data they produce. Past climate patterns can be discerned by examining variables such as temperature and precipitation records, lake sediments, tree rings, and ice cores. Projecting future regional and global climate patterns, however, requires computer models that can simulate the complex interplay between physical, chemical, and biological processes occurring in the atmosphere, ocean, and on land and sea ice. These models are extremely computationally demanding. Over the past several decades, an ongoing revolution in high-capacity, high-performance computing has accelerated climate modeling. In 1998, a 1-year simulation of global climate using a 300- kilometer grid could be run in a day. In 2002, it took 4 or 5 hours. In 2015, this same model can be run on a high-end desktop in minutes. |
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