[ESAC Seminar] Paolo Giani

“Origin and limits of invariant warming patterns in climate models”

In typical end-of-century climate projections from coupled models, the warming pattern (the ratio between the local temperature anomaly and the global temperature anomaly) is approximately constant (i.e., independent of the emission scenario and/or time). This has been empirically observed in several generation of climate models, and has been widely used to build ‘climate emulators’ — Fast approximations of expensive coupled models that rely on linearly scaling the global average by a fixed precomputed pattern. I will present some energy balance arguments to outline a theory that explains why the warming pattern is indeed expected to be constant in end-of-century projections, with the goals of (1) providing some physical understanding to this intriguing empirical observation and (2) defining the limits of applicability of the constant-pattern approximation. If time allows, I will present some ongoing work that builds on this theory to provide additional understanding into the intermodel spread in local climate projections (i.e., why do different climate models give very different projections for Boston’s climate if we increase CO2 fourfold?)

ESAC Student Seminar Series —

A forum for students and postdocs to share recent research, hone presentation skills, and build community among peers, sponsored by the EAPS Student Advisory Committee. Open to current EAPS graduate and undergraduate students and postdocs. Typically hosted on Thursdays during the semester, including pizza lunch.

Contact: esac.officers@gmail.com