D&A - Finding a good pair of warm genes!
Identifying a climate trend or extreme event, and evaluating the possible causes responsible for the observed behavior.
What is the definition of Detection and Attribution?
A set of equations used to explain or represent climate phenomena.
What is a mathematical model?
These are quantitative, equally plausible, alternative futures that help identify vulnerabilities and minimize risk impacts.
What are emission scenarios?
These components of the cryosphere act as a massive storage of freshwater (~69%).
What are glaciers and ice sheets?
The level of emissions influence temperature projections in this way.
What is the greater the emissions, the greater the temperature change?
External influence, which may be anthropogenic or natural in origin, that explains a possible contribution of an observed change.
anthropogenic: GHGs, land use change.
natural: volcanic eruptions, solar cycle.
What is a causal factor?
A set of complex mathematical equations that simulate the physical, chemical, and biological processes that drive the climate system.
What is a climate model?
The simulated response of the climate system under a given emissions scenario.
What is a climate projection?
Nearly one-quarter of the land in the NH is covered by this component of the cryosphere and has the potential to release bacteria, viruses, microbes, and carbon back into the atmosphere.
What is permafrost?
The geographical location where warming is expected to be the greatest is found here.
What is high northern latitudes, also referred to as arctic amplification?
Running a climate model with and without anthropogenic emissions and identifying which test best matched the observed change.
What is a method used to detect the human influence on climate?
A size of a grid cell and the length of time in which energy and matter are simulated within a general circulation model.
What is spatial and temporal resolution?
Mathematical generalization of human influence on climate and the basis of all emission scenarios.
What is I=PxAxT?
Large deviations of the jet stream (atmospheric circulation) due to a warming arctic lead to an increased likelihood of this.
What is the impact of a warming cryospehre on extreme weather events on a global scale.
This component of the climate system is expected to increase in high latitude and the tropical regions.
What is the anticipated changes in precipitation by 2100 under RCP8.5 radiative forcing.
Detection and attribution indicates that driving a Global Climate Model (GCM) with only this type of forcing does not explain the current trend in observed global temperature.
What is a natural forcing (solar variations and volcanic eruptions)?
A process in which a model is provided a set of observations for a specific time period in the past and is ran forward in time.
What is hind-casting?
Note: This type of test allows scientists to check the accuracy of climate models and, if needed, revise its physical, chemical, and biological representations (mathematical equations).
Known as the “business as usual” pathway, which combines limited local solutions, rapidly increasing population, negative land use changes, intensive fossil fuel use, and continued increases in GHG emissions to produce drastic global temperature increase (<6°C).
Bonus: Which Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) is the above comparable to by the year 2100?
What is the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) RCP8.5 scenario?
Bonus: RCP8.5 is comparable in radiative forcing to SRES A2 scenario by 2100.
These two processes are driving sea level rise.
What is the result of melting of land ice and thermal expansion of the oceans?
An increase in consecutive dry days implys that this will happen.
What is less frequent precipitation in mid-latitudes?
These are two of the three methods used in detection and attribution studies.
What is observational trend analysis and observation vs. model simulation comparison.
or statistical model approach (e.g., a reconstruction based on a linear regression).
These two type of modeling experiments explore representative climate sensitivities that would otherwise not be able to be completed.
What are a prognostic and diagnostic experiments?
Prognostic: predict the likely outcome, emission scenarios.
Diagnostic: demonstrating a certain change has occurred.
Due to these three sources of uncertainty, climate scientists run several different climate models and average over several different model runs (ensemble averages) in an attempt to reduce error.
What are internal, scientific, and scenario uncertainty in climate projections?
Note:
1) internal - natural complexity of the climate system
2) scientific - physical and mathematical representation or accuracy of hist. data.
3) scenario - societal decision on GHG emissions.
Changes in snow cover, river and lake ice, and permafrost will impact communities living within the cryosphere in this way.
What are water and food security, as well as infrastructure?
Averages are not the only anticipated temperature changes; we also expect significant decreases in these.
What are record low temperatures (cold outbreaks)?