"It's worse than we thought." Sound familiar? [View all]

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"While scientists express confidence that the earth will continue to warm in response to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, fine-tuning those projections has been a challenge. The majority of estimates fall between a rise of 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit), which leaves quite a wide range of uncertainty.

While the numbers may seem relatively trivial to the layman, they represent a vast range of potential impacts on society in terms of sea-level rise, heat waves and extreme weather.

A new paper in Friday’s issue of the journal Science adds to that discussion, suggesting that future warming may fall on the high side of climate projections.

“There’s been a lot of uncertainty and quite a range of this quantity called climate sensitivity in the climate models,” said one of the authors, Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist in the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “If you take our results at face value, it certainly indicates that the climate change will be at the higher side of what’s been put forth previously, and that’s not good news.”

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/a-new-tweak-for-global-warming-predictions/