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SUMMARY:Emergent Constraints on Earth System Sensitivities - Cox\, PM (Uni
 versity of Exeter)
DTSTART:20131031T114500Z
DTEND:20131031T122000Z
UID:TALK48629@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mustapha Amrani
DESCRIPTION:Co-author: Chris Huntingford (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
 ) \n\nClimate and Earth System Models are designed to project changes in t
 he climate-carbon cycle system over the coming centuries. These models hav
 e ever higher spatial resolution and are based on an improving understandi
 ng of key processes. However\, climate modelling still suffers from a sign
 ificant timescale problem  we need to find constraints on the huge range o
 f projected changes in the climate-carbon system over the next century\, b
 ut the observational data that we have relates to much shorter timescales.
  This talk will summarise one promising way around the timescale problem -
  the use of Emergent Constraints. An Emergent Constraint is a relationship
  between some climate system sensitivity to anthropogenic forcing and an o
 bservable (or already observed) feature of the climate system. We call it 
 emergent because it emerges from the ensemble of models\, and it is descri
 bed as a constraint because it enables an observation to constrain the est
 imate of the cli mate system sensitivity in the real world. As an example\
 , I will describe an emergent constraint on the projected loss of tropical
  land carbon under climate change\, which has a huge range amongst climate
 -carbon cycle projections for the 21st century. We have recently identifie
 d an emergent linear relationship across the ensemble of models between th
 e sensitivity of tropical land-carbon storage to warming and the sensitivi
 ty of the annual growth-rate in atmospheric CO2 to tropical temperature an
 omalies. When combined with contemporary observations of the atmospheric C
 O2 concentration and the tropical temperature\, this relationship provides
  a tight constraint on the sensitivity of tropical land carbon to warming 
 in the real climate system (Cox et al.\, Nature\, 2013). The talk will con
 clude by hypothesising how such emergent constraints may relate to (a) the
  Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem and (b) Time-series Precursors of Tipping
  Points.\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
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