Events and seminars

Event:	Global Change Seminar
Date:	12:30, Wed 07 Nov, 2012
Speaker:	Chris Brierley, University College London
Title:	Lessons from the warm climate of the Early Pliocene
Venue:	Room 302, Crew Building
Host:	Tom Russon
Abstract:	Climate change is a multi-faceted phenomenon and the phrase 'global warming' has been side-lined to reflect this. However, the change in global mean surface temperature remains as the primary index of climate change and is used, for example, to define the climate sensitivity. This measure is particularly poor at capturing changes in the structural patterns of climate in the Tropics, such as can be seen in past warm climates. I will introduce a new measure focused on structural climate change. This will be used to characterise the early Pliocene (four million years ago), when the tropical Pacific had much weaker temperature gradients. Combined with a series a model sensitivity studies, I quantify how the existing hypotheses explain this climate state. Physics currently not included by climate models appears the most important reason for the weak tropical temperature gradients in this analogue for future climate.

This article was published on Aug 16, 2010