If ya live in Europe, fall 2006 musta been one helluva season.
Many climatologist worry that climate models severely underestimate the effects of global warming. The extraordinary temperatures recorded in Europe in Autumn 2006 might just be the smoking gun that proves that these models really do get it wrong, big time.
Here’s what happened. The immediate causes of the heat ‘n’ sweat were southerly winds driving heat northwards and persistence from the very hot July along the North Sea coast. These generated record temperatures all over Europe but some records were spectacular. In some places, the average temperature was 4 degrees C higher than average. The average temperature in the Netherlands was 1.6 degrees C higher than the previous record which was set in 1730 and 1731 (they got long memories over there).
Now Geert van Oldenborgh from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute has analysed how global warming might have contributed to the weather that autumn and he has some worrying news. Current climate models simply cannot reproduce the kind of warming seen in Europe during that period probably because they do not account for nonlinear effects that result in extreme conditions.
Van Oldenborgh’s conclusion?
“Either autumn 2006 was a very rare event, or these climate models do not give the correct change in temperature distribution as the temperature rises.”
Who knows what to expect now?
Stock up on suncream
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0711.3720: How Unusual was Autumn 2006 in Europe?