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Climate change

Models change their tune

Nature volume 430, pages 737–738 (2004)Cite this article

Climate models are usually tuned to match observations. A new approach, in which the models are detuned instead, increases our confidence in projections of future warming.

In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its report stating that the Earth will warm by between 1.4 °C and 5.8 °C by the end of the twenty-first century1. Many argue that this range is too large to justify action to reduce the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. Two factors are responsible for the wide estimated range: uncertainty in our understanding of the physical processes that influence climate and our ability to model them; and uncertainty over the so-called ‘emissions path’ — how the demographic, technological and ecological development of human societies will affect energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions.

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  1. the Division of Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, CH-3012, Sidlerstrasse 5, Switzerland

    Thomas F. Stocker

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  1. Thomas F. Stocker
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Stocker, T. Models change their tune. Nature 430, 737–738 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/430737a

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