14 DAY TRIAL // Do you think this summer was hot? In this case, prepare yourselves, this is just the beginning: the next 10 summers will be similar. Temperature records will be repeatedly broken in the next decade, as signaled by a first rigorous approach on the global climate for the next 10 years.
Scientists based their results on an innovative technique that joins weather forecasting, typically focusing on a few days ahead and climate modelers, who predict clime changes at the end of the century. The new model goes up to 2015, shedding light on some puzzles about climate predictions.
Even if average global temperatures appeared relatively stable in recent years, the research team predicts they will start rising again in 2008. At least half of the years between 2009 and 2015 will exceed the current warmest year on record and by 2015, global temperatures will be 0.5 ?C over the average value for the last 30 years.
"This is a very important paper. This is just the beginning for this approach." said Rong Zhang, an oceanographer at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, who employs similar techniques to investigate the Atlantic Ocean.
"The forecast is only possible because better figures are available on the state of the world's oceans," said co-author Doug Smith, a climate modeler at the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, UK.
Over 3,000 automated ocean-going devices, called Argo floats, have been deployed around the planet since 1999. The devices deliver updates on ocean temperature and salinity, crucial factors in assessing global climate patterns. Without this information, traditional models missed the finest details of current climate change.
But their predictions hold only for periods of decades, as ocean factors influencing temperature will have been triggered by more powerful factors, like greenhouse warming.
The approach seems to be reliable: some data run in 2005 match subsequent observations in the recent plateau in global temperatures.
"Such lulls could be used by climate change skeptics to argue that the world is not warming as predicted and that plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions are unnecessary, so it is useful to be able to spot a brief pause in what is expected to be a steady increase. There would be pressure not to mitigate emissions if we couldn't predict a flattening," said Smith.
"Policy makers are also likely to benefit in other ways, since the approach used by Smith will soon be applied to regional climate models. That could eventually lead to better predictions of droughts and floods, events that are hard to predict even a few months in advance." said Zhang.
Electricity generators could predict demand based on the model, because energy consumption rises during very hot or cold spells.
"One UK electricity company is already buying our data and the results will also be considered by the project's sponsors, the UK government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs." said Smith.