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Climate science

Expulsion from history

Nature volume 511, pages 38–39 (2014)Cite this article

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Global warming is projected to force climatic variables in some places beyond the range of historical experience, perhaps permanently. A reassessment shows that this could begin sooner or much later than recently estimated.

Earth will continue to warm under plausible 'business-as-usual' scenarios for future greenhouse-gas emissions1, which assume that little, if anything, is done to abate emissions. This warming, in turn, will cause further widespread changes in the climate system1. Future climatic conditions will also depend on naturally occurring climatic variability1,2, a large component of which arises spontaneously within the climate system2,3; the El Niño–Southern Oscillation is one example of such internal climate variability2,4. In a paper published in Nature last year, Mora et al.5 estimated when permanent departures — or expulsions — from the historical range of variability will commence. Hawkins and colleagues6 now dispute these estimates in a Brief Communications Arising published on Nature's website, and question the magnitude of the associated uncertainty provided by Mora and co-workers.

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Figure 1: Illustration of climatic expulsion.

References

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  1. Scott B. Power is at the Bureau of Meteorology, GPO Box 1289, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia.

    Scott B. Power

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  1. Scott B. Power
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Correspondence to Scott B. Power.

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Power, S. Expulsion from history. Nature 511, 38–39 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/511038a

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