from flooding to wildfires to migration
climate change is not only a fat but
it’s proving to be an immediate concern
hey welcome to watchmojo.com i’m your
host derek allen and today we had the
chance to speak to climate model or
Gavin Schmidt to address these issues so
you’re a climatologist and also a
climate modeler can you explain to us
what climate modeling is we don’t have
like a hundred different earths that we
can play around with we just have one so
what we need are analogs we need kind of
computer models digital numerical models
that we can poke and products we look at
all the processes that are going on in
the plan on on the planet so evaporation
of water from the oceans the formation
of clouds rainfall the winds pushing the
ocean currents around we can put it all
together and then we can see whether
what we produce actually looks like the
real world in terms of climate change
and the environment how do you take into
account what we are doing to the planet
we’ve been chopping down forests and
planting crops well that changes how
much the sunlight is being reflected and
how the evaporation through the trees is
being changed we’ve added greenhouse
gases to the atmosphere we’ve added
about thirty percent more carbon dioxide
we’ve doubled or more the amount of
methane in the atmosphere they’ve made
most of the difference in the last few
decades and particularly the last three
decades of global warming it is obvious
that humans are in some way a part of
the problem how we’re able to support
this claim different causes of change
have different fingerprints in the
system so for instance if the sun gets
brighter or dimmer and it does it has an
11-year cycle it gets it gets slightly
brighter side dinner or what that does
is it heats up the whole atmosphere from
the bottom all the way up to the top
greenhouse gases have a different
signature so they heat up the bottom but
I actually call the top and so if you
look for specific patterns that are
associated with specific forcing
elements office specific drivers then
you can see whether you know what we
thought of as being the cause actually
is the course so we can do this kind of
pattern recognition and build a kind of
a balance of evidence so you mentioned
some of the symptoms that we’ve seen in
the past and we’re seeing now what can
we expect in the future in the American
Southwest for instance we anticipate
that it’s going to get drier
we’re going to get more intense rain so
that leads to more flooding wildfires
that depends on moisture availability
during the summertime particularly we’re
going to see pests and invasive species
kind of moving poleward moving further
north out of where they used to live and
to higher latitudes we’re already seeing
that with the pine bark beetle in
British Columbia that’s devastating pine
forests there so during some of our
research we saw you often called an
alarmist how would you go about
explaining why people tell you this I am
one of the people who isn’t afraid to
put their head above the parapet and say
look you know this is what the science
shows though warming is real it’s been
caused by humans and it’s very likely to
get worse
climate change is not only a fat but
it’s proving to be an immediate concern
hey welcome to watchmojo.com i’m your
host derek allen and today we had the
chance to speak to climate model or
Gavin Schmidt to address these issues so
you’re a climatologist and also a
climate modeler can you explain to us
what climate modeling is we don’t have
like a hundred different earths that we
can play around with we just have one so
what we need are analogs we need kind of
computer models digital numerical models
that we can poke and products we look at
all the processes that are going on in
the plan on on the planet so evaporation
of water from the oceans the formation
of clouds rainfall the winds pushing the
ocean currents around we can put it all
together and then we can see whether
what we produce actually looks like the
real world in terms of climate change
and the environment how do you take into
account what we are doing to the planet
we’ve been chopping down forests and
planting crops well that changes how
much the sunlight is being reflected and
how the evaporation through the trees is
being changed we’ve added greenhouse
gases to the atmosphere we’ve added
about thirty percent more carbon dioxide
we’ve doubled or more the amount of
methane in the atmosphere they’ve made
most of the difference in the last few
decades and particularly the last three
decades of global warming it is obvious
that humans are in some way a part of
the problem how we’re able to support
this claim different causes of change
have different fingerprints in the
system so for instance if the sun gets
brighter or dimmer and it does it has an
11-year cycle it gets it gets slightly
brighter side dinner or what that does
is it heats up the whole atmosphere from
the bottom all the way up to the top
greenhouse gases have a different
signature so they heat up the bottom but
I actually call the top and so if you
look for specific patterns that are
associated with specific forcing
elements office specific drivers then
you can see whether you know what we
thought of as being the cause actually
is the course so we can do this kind of
pattern recognition and build a kind of
a balance of evidence so you mentioned
some of the symptoms that we’ve seen in
the past and we’re seeing now what can
we expect in the future in the American
Southwest for instance we anticipate
that it’s going to get drier
we’re going to get more intense rain so
that leads to more flooding wildfires
that depends on moisture availability
during the summertime particularly we’re
going to see pests and invasive species
kind of moving poleward moving further
north out of where they used to live and
to higher latitudes we’re already seeing
that with the pine bark beetle in
British Columbia that’s devastating pine
forests there so during some of our
research we saw you often called an
alarmist how would you go about
explaining why people tell you this I am
one of the people who isn’t afraid to
put their head above the parapet and say
look you know this is what the science
shows though warming is real it’s been
caused by humans and it’s very likely to
get worse
Please follow and like us: