A method is presented to estimate the probability distributions of climate system properties based on a hierarchical Bayesian model. At the base of the model, we use simulations of a climate model in which the outputs depend on the climate system properties and can also be compared with observations. The degree to which the model outputs are “consistent” with the observations is used to obtain ...

Climate models are complex mathematical models designed by meteorologists, geophysicists, and climate scientists, and run as computer simulations, to predict climate. There is currently high variance among the predictions of 20 global climate models, from various laboratories around the world, that inform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Given temperature predictions from 2...

Radiatively active trace gases such as CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons warm the surface-troposphere system by iru~reasing the infrared opacity of the atmosphere. Climate models have been used to estiimate the warming associated with future increases in these gases. An important issue is the sensitivity, or the amount of climate response associated with a given amount of radi...

Regional climate models are useful tools for regional climate research. They are especially helpful for studying the effects of topography, coastlines, and other complex landsurface properties on regional climate and for simulating these effects realistically. Although regional climate modeling started more than ten years ago, improvements in model physics and performance have been slow. There ...

We present probabilistic projections of 21st century climate change over Northern Eurasia using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Integrated Global System Model (IGSM), an integrated assessment model that couples an Earth system model of intermediate complexity with a two-dimensional zonal-mean atmosphere to a human activity model. Regional climate change is obtained by two downsc...

The subject of climate feedbacks focuses attention on global mean surface air temperature (GMST) as the key metric of climate change. But what does knowledge of past and future GMST tell us about the climate of specific regions? In the context of the ongoing UNFCCC process, this is an important question for policy-makers as well as for scientists. The answer depends on many factors, including t...

Recent research has highlighted risks associated with the use of climate engineering as a method of stabilizing global temperatures, including the possibility of rapid climate warming in the case of abrupt removal of engineered radiative forcing. In this study, we have used a simple climate model to estimate the likely range of temperature changes associated with implementation and removal of c...

over the coming decades, global change will have an impact on food and water security and there are strong indications that developing countries will bear the brunt of adverse consequences from climate change. agricultural sector is the most vulnerable to climate change, because of its dependence on water and temperature conditions. consequently, it is important to understand the impacts of cli...