{"id":12239,"date":"2016-04-08T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/another-study-says-warming-may-be-worse-than-experts-think\/"},"modified":"2016-04-08T08:00:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T15:00:47","slug":"another-study-says-warming-may-be-worse-than-experts-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/another-study-says-warming-may-be-worse-than-experts-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Another study says warming may be worse than experts think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WASHINGTON \u2014<\/strong> Most computer simulations of climate change are underestimating by at least one degree how warm the world will get this century, a new study suggests.<\/p>\n<p>It all comes down to clouds and how much heat they are trapping.  According to the study published Thursday in the journal Science, computer model simulations say there is more ice and less liquid water in clouds than a decade of satellite observations show.<\/p>\n<p>The more water and less ice in clouds, the more heat is trapped and less the light is reflected, said study co-author Trude Storelvmo, a Yale atmospheric scientist. She said even though it tens of degrees below freezing, the clouds still have lots of liquid water because they don\u2019t have enough particles that helps the water turn to ice crystals.<\/p>\n<p>Because as the climate changes, there will be more clouds with far more liquid, and global warming will be higher than previously thought, Storelvmo said.<\/p>\n<p>How much warming is predicted for the next 80 or so years depends a lot on if society cuts back on carbon dioxide emissions. In the worst case scenario, with no carbon reduction, the United Nations\u2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sees temperatures rising by about 6.7 degrees by the end of the century and Storelvmo said the liquid cloud factor would add another degree or more on top of that.<\/p>\n<p>While the study is \u201cwell-reasoned\u201d and \u201csobering,\u201d there are uncertainties with the satellite observations that raise questions for Chris Bretherton at the University of Washington, who wasn\u2019t part of the study. He said if the Yale team is right and there\u2019s a bigger cloud feedback, why hasn\u2019t warming so far been even higher? That\u2019s a legitimate question, Storelvmo said, but computer simulations may also be underestimating the cooling effect of aerosols that mask the warming but are diminishing in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>This is just the latest in a series of studies that have found that mainstream science may be too conservative in estimating the pace and effects of warming, including melting ice sheets in Antarctica.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNone of this is good news,\u201d Storelvmo said. \u201cYou always hope that climate isn\u2019t as sensitive to carbon dioxide as we fear, same with the ice sheets, but we\u2019re calling it as we see it. Several studies have come out and show that we\u2019ve been too conservative up until now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Uncertainties in mainstream climate science are more \u201con the bad side\u201d than on the side of less harm, said climate and glacier scientist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University, who wasn\u2019t part of the study. \u201cClimate science thus is probably more open to criticism of being too conservative than being too alarmist.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 Most computer simulations of climate change are underestimating by at least one degree how warm the world will get this century, a new study suggests. It all comes down to clouds and how much heat they are trapping. According to the study published Thursday in the journal Science, computer model simulations say there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-12239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12239"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}