Seminar: Dr. John Fyfe
Please join us as we welcome Dr. John Fyfe, a Senior Research Scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (Victoria, BC) at Environment and Climate Change Canada, for a seminar titled "Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown". Coffee will be served.
Abstract
It has been claimed that the early-2000s global warming slowdown or hiatus, characterized by a reduced rate of global surface warming, has been overstated, lacks sound scientific basis, or is unsupported by observations. In the first half of my presentation I'll provide evidence that contradicts these claims. In the second half of my presentation I'll focus on the unexpected decadal cooling that has been observed over North America and Eurasia. Both of these (unrelated) phenomena represent a significant deviation from expected anthropogenic warming and so require explanation. Using very large ensembles of fully coupled, partially coupled and uncoupled climate model simulations I'll show that these phenomena were the consequence of rare fluctuations in mid-latitude circulation that, contrary to recent claims, were unrelated to tropical Pacific variation or Arctic sea ice loss. These results will highlight how internally-generated decadal climate signals can offset anthropogenic warming to produce continental-scale cooling.