Trakar
VIP Member
- Feb 28, 2011
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Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011
Environ. Res. Lett. 7 (2012) 044035 (5pp) doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044035(excerpt)
In conclusion, the rise in CO2 concentration and global temperature has continued to closely match the projections over the past five years, while sea level continues to rise faster than anticipated. The latter suggests that the 21st Century sea-level projections of the last two IPCC reports may be systematically biased low. Further support for this concern is provided by the fact that the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are increasingly losing mass (Rignot et al 2011, Van den Broeke et al 2011), while those IPCC projections assumed that Antarctica will gain enough mass in future to largely compensate mass losses from Greenland (see figure 10.33 in Meehl et al (2007)). For this reason, an additional contribution (scaled-up ice sheet discharge) was suggested in the IPCC fourth assessment. Our results highlight the need to thoroughly validate models with data of past climate changes before applying them to projections.
Full paper available at:
http://mall.lampnet.org/filemanager/download/1588/comparing_climate_projections.pdf
http://mall.lampnet.org/filemanager/download/1588/comparing_climate_projections.pdf
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