Modellers Predict Douple their Prior Temperature Increase by 2100

Modellers predict doubly bad global warming – physicsworld.com.

New findings predict that global temperature increases will be twice as high by the end of the century as previously forecast, unless international policy action is taken. That is the prediction of scientists using the Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM), a project funded in part by the US Department of Energy.

IGSM is unique amongst climate predictors because it is underpinned by a flexible economic model that projects future changes in human activities such as trade between nations. Climate scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have used the model taking into account physical factors like the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions for the first time.

The researchers predict a 90 % probability that surface temperatures will be 3.5° to 7.4° higher by 2100, under a scenario involving no policies to specifically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These temperature increases are more than twice those predicted under the previous version of IGSM, which was run back in 2003. The model was also run for different scenarios involving “strong” policies to curb emissions, and the temperature never rose above 2.5°, which is relatively unchanged from the 2003 prediction.

Read on at http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39207
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