Climate models may be underestimating the impact climate change will have on the UK, North America and other extratropical regions due to a crucial missing element, new research has shown.
Climate models may be underestimating the impact climate change will have on the UK, North America and other extratropical regions due to a crucial missing element, new research has shown.
Scientists at the University of Reading have warned that current projections of how a warming world will affect regional temperatures and rainfall do not take into account the fact that extratropical winds – which have a strong influence on climate in the mid-latitudes – vary greatly from decade to decade.
The research team used observations of these winds over the 20th century to better represent their variability in climate model predictions of the future. They found that this made the predictions of future climate less certain in the extratropics – particularly in the North Atlantic region and particularly in winter – and that unusually hot, cold, wet or dry decades are projected to be much more likely by the middle of the century in this region than existing climate simulations suggest.
The research is published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment.
Read more at University of Reading
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