Published: 07 May 2008
Future sees end of Traditional Wet British Summer?
Results from the latest multiple model ensemble techniques in climate change forecasting, published by the Royal Society indicate that average summer rainfall for the northern Europe could decrease significantly by the end of the century.
The findings use Met Office Hadley Centre climate simulations in a multiple model ensemble. This method has been pioneered by climate research scientists at the Met Office and is described in an article on its website.
The results using multiple runs of the Met Office Hadley Centre model with different physics provisionally suggest that summer rainfall will decrease by between 5 and 20% by the end of the century across northern Europe (comparing the average over 2070-2100 with the average from 1961-1990), using a medium greenhouse gas emissions scenario.
It is thanks to multiple model ensembles that climate scientists will be able to provide a more systematic risk assessment of projected climate change.
The ultimate aim is to generate detailed probabilities for a range of possible changes in climate, designed to give more information on the possible uncertainties in future climate.
Dr James Murphy, Head of Climate Prediction at the Met Office, who pioneered this work, said:
"The science of probabilistic and ensemble climate prediction is still rather young but is growing quickly. Today's results are a step forward, but the numbers should be regarded as preliminary.
The Met Office is implementing further developments in the technique, which will provide a basis for the estimation of probabilities associated with different levels of future climate change."
Dr Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change for Government at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said:
"By making use of such a wealth of data, covering such a wide array of climate processes, multiple model ensembles allow for far better management of risks than when only using one projection, and can inform policy in a far more comprehensive and meaningful way than was previously the case."
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