Improved regional temperature predictions from a minimalist model

نویسندگان

  • Karen McKinnon
  • Peter Huybers
چکیده

The general circulation models (GCMs) used to simulate future climate are under-constrained, as evidenced by the fact that factor-of-two changes in rates of ocean heat uptake1, 2, magnitudes of radiative forcing anomalies3, 4, and the strength of various feedbacks5–7 can be traded off against one another to yield results that all agree with observations8, 9. This indeterminacy, although inevitable given finite observations and incomplete theory, prompts the question of whether retaining many of the inherently under-constrained processes represented within GCMs is useful for predicting future climate. Here we present a simple energy balance model (EBM) that is tuned only to the seasonal cycle and driven by the same radiative perturbations as each of 18 GCMs10, 11, and show that it reproduces the spatial and temporal record of surface temperature between 1850 and 2009 better than any of the GCMs or their ensemble average. A major discrepancy appears in the Arctic, where the GCMs give more warming than observed or produced by the EBM. On the basis of a better fit with the historical observations, and noting that both the GCMs and EBM predict warming patterns that are essentially linear extrapolation of their historical anomaly patterns, we suggest that the EBM’s predictions of surface temperature are more credible.

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تاریخ انتشار 2011