Smarter investment in climate science for long-term savings
The costs of adjusting to climate change could be reduced by up to 20% worldwide if investment in targeted research is made now. This was the conclusion of a study conducted by UK scientists on temperature change predictions, published in the Bulletin for the American Meteorological Society. Research provides society with solutions to the problems it faces today. It can also provide us with the insight to put measures in place to avoid the problems we may face in the future. In this regard, funding bodies such as the European Commission have a clearly articulated commitment to backing research and to turning new discoveries into products and services that benefit society. Over the past two decades, the phenomenon of climate change, both the transformations already taking place and those being forecast in the short and long term, has been well documented in the public arena. Governments, funding bodies and researchers worldwide are increasingly focusing their attention on this global challenge. But how precise is the focus? Given the nature of forecasting, it is a case of reducing the uncertainty ratio of what will and will not happen in the future. Results from the study undertaken by scientists from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science suggest that investment in climate science can reduce this uncertainty, making it possible to strike closer to the bull's eye of the target. This, in turn, would reduce the financial burden of adapting to the planet's changes in the long run. According to the report's co-authors, Ed Hawkins and Rowan Sutton, 'Because the costs of adaptation are very large, and greater uncertainty about future climate is likely to be associated with more expensive adaptation, reducing uncertainty in climate predictions is potentially of enormous economic value'. The team used a suite of climate models to identify the main causes of uncertainty in predictions of regional temperature change. Although similar studies have been conducted in the past, this research represents the first undertaken on regional scales across the globe. The scientists believe that there are three main sources of uncertainty in climate predictions: internal variability (the fluctuations that arise naturally, and not as a result of human influences), model uncertainty (different models simulate different changes in climate) and scenario uncertainty (e.g. uncertainty in future emissions of greenhouse gases). Their findings reveal that internal variability and model uncertainty will be the main sources for all regions over the next 40 years. Dr Hawkins said: 'Our work suggests that investments in ocean observations, for example, and their use in setting the initial conditions of climate models and in verifying predictions, could give some of the best returns in improved models and climate forecasts for the next 5 to 50 years. It is not until the 2050s that the dominant uncertainty is in the unknown future emissions of greenhouse gases.'
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