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Study investigating climate change models suggests impact studies should include high-sensitivity climate models

Impact studies should include high-sensitivity climate models
Frequency distribution of projected change in our three regional climate drivers (metrics). Top left: number of model simulations with a given effective climate sensitivities (EffCS) value below (blue) or above (red) 4.5K. Other panels show the distribution of projected change in the metrics for—drought, left; fire, bottom; monsoon flood, right – for each of the two model subsets (vertical axis shows normalized occurrence, i.e. the area under each curve is equal to 1). The value of 4.5K is between the upper bounds of the AR6 assessed likely (4K) and very likely (5K) ranges for EffCS, and provides for a sufficient number of simulations in each of the subsets. Stars indicate the metric values for five model simulations that are used as input to many impact models (Lange & Büchner, 2021), and are color–coded by EffCS (cf. legend of Figure 2). The map shows the regions over which the impact drivers are analyzed. See Materials and methods section for more detail on how the projected change in each driver was calculated, model simulations, and statistical methods. Credit: Earth's Future (2024). DOI: 10.1029/2024EF004901, https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024EF004901

High-sensitivity climate models should not be excluded when projecting future regional climate impacts because the level of warming measured globally is not always the only good indicator of regional changes, a new study suggests.

Some models which scientists use to project future changes in Earth's climate show faster global warming than others, leading to temperature projections that are considered unlikely. Some experts suggest that these more sensitive (or "hotter") models should be omitted when studying future climate impacts.

New research today in Earth's Future shows no clear correlation between the rate of warming and some important regional drivers. Instead, how the behavior of regional weather patterns control impacts needs to be considered too.

Dr. Ranjini Swaminathan, lead author at the University of Reading and National Centre for Earth Observation, said, "We should not exclude from impact assessments based on their climate sensitivity as this could lead to ignoring future outcomes that are potentially serious and realistic.

"What happens globally doesn't always match what happens locally and we show that no universal correlation exists between climate sensitivity and regional climate drivers. For example, we see a general increase in the number of drought events in the future, but we don't see a statistically significant correlation between the change in the number of drought events and climate sensitivity. This is because the magnitude of global warming is just one of many factors influencing drought and is often not the most important.

"Our results contradict suggestions that models showing higher warming should be excluded from studies about ."

Preparing communities

The researchers studied how different models predict three major climate impacts: that cause flooding, droughts that affect farming and , and conditions that increase the risk of wildfire. They looked at these across different parts of the world, including the Amazon rainforest, Australia, East Asia, and parts of Africa and India.

They discovered that how much global warming a model predicts isn't the main factor in determining local impacts—regional factors matter too. If models are selected based only upon their prediction of , important and physically plausible outcomes of regional climate impacts could be missed. This could lead to an inaccurate portrayal of the risks that need to be considered by governments and communities as they adapt to climate change.

More information: Ranjini Swaminathan et al. Regional impacts poorly constrained by climate sensitivity, Earth's Future (2024). ,

Journal information: Earth's Future

Provided by University of Reading

Citation: Study investigating climate change models suggests impact studies should include high-sensitivity climate models (2024, December 5) retrieved 9 June 2025 from /news/2024-12-climate-impact-high-sensitivity.html
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