Polar ice, atmospheric water vapor biggest drivers of variation among climate models — ScienceDaily
A Florida State University researcher is part of a team that has found varying projections on global warming trends put forth by climate change scientists can be explained by differing models’ predictions regarding ice loss and atmospheric water vapor.
The work will help climate scientists reconcile various models to improve their accuracy, said Florida State University Meteorology Professor Ming Cai, one of the authors of the study published in Nature Communications .
Climate scientists agree that the Earth’s surface temperature is warming, but the details of exactly where and by how much are less clear. A worst-case climate change scenario (known as the “Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5”) predicted a likely increase in average global temperatures of about 2.6 degrees Celsius to 4.8 degrees Celsius (or about 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit to 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
“This uncertainty limits our ability to foresee the severity of the global warming impacts on