Tri-Cities Tech Business Update
Alternative futures of a warming world
An international team of climate scientists will take a new approach to modeling the Earth's climate future. According to the paper published in the February 11 edition of Nature, the next set of models will include, for the first time, tightly linked analyses of greenhouse gas emissions, projections of the Earth's climate, impacts of climate change, and human decision-making. This approach will influence the next international scientific assessment undertaken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It will provide the framework for thousands of individual scientific studies on climate impacts and adaptation, climate modeling, and changes in the way societies generate and use energy. "This is an open-ended approach that enables us to compare the environmental and socio-economic effects of different potential responses to climate change," said lead author Richard Moss, a scientist with the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who performs climate change impacts research at the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md. Moss has been a long-time contributor to the IPCC, previously directed the office of the US Global Change Research Program, and served as vice president for climate programs at the World Wildlife Fund. "This comparative evaluation is extremely important to determine the technical, policy, and economic requirements for reaching whatever society decides is a safe level of climate change. We hope to provide decision-makers with better tools to help people deal with a shifting climate," he said. Read the complete news release.
