Research published in this week’s issue of Nature Communications reveals a considerable chance for an ice-free Arctic Ocean at global warming limits stipulated in the Paris Agreement.
Research published in this week’s issue of Nature Communications reveals a considerable chance for an ice-free Arctic Ocean at global warming limits stipulated in the Paris Agreement. Scientists from South Korea, Australia and the USA used results from climate models and a new statistical approach to calculate the likelihood for Arctic sea ice to disappear at different warming levels.
Future climate projections are usually obtained from global climate computer models. These models are based on several hundred thousand lines of computer code, developed to solve the physical equations of the atmosphere, ocean, sea-ice and other climate components. Applying future greenhouse gas concentrations, each computer model produces a version of what the future of the Earth’s climate might look like. Transforming this information into practical decisions is not easy, because of the remaining uncertainties in the magnitude of future climate change on regional scales. Decision making in a warming world requires an understanding of the probabilities of certain climatic events to occur.
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