Research pair finds global warming matched predictions from 1990
Source: Phys.org
Research pair finds global warming matched predictions from 1990
December 10, 2012 by Bob Yirka
(Phys.org)—A pair of researchers has found that an estimate made in 1990 by a team of global scientists regarding how much temperatures would rise due to increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is very close to what actually happened. The two, David Frame, of New Zealand's Victoria University and Daithi Stone, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have published their findings in Nature Climate Change.
In 1990, a team of scientists with members from across the globe published a paper called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the paper was to be the first of many published over many years to track, assess and make predictions regarding the progress of global warming. In their paper, the group estimated that average global temperatures would increase by approximately 1.1 degrees Celsius by 2030 – the halfway point, which would be 2010 would, they argued, be about a .55 degree increase.
To find out how close the earlier team was to its estimates, Frame and Stone gathered statistical data collected by various agencies around the world which are used to provide data for calculating average global temperatures and any changes that occur year to year – for the period 1990 through 2010. They discovered that there were actually two sets of averages – one showed an increase in average global temperature of 0.35 degrees Celsius the other 0.39. The researchers then added what they called an adjustment to the numbers to reflect naturally occurring fluctuations in global temperature averages and found that the results fit almost perfectly with the predictions made 22 years ago.
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Read more: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-pair-global.html
