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Climate change: Science failed to predict flood and heat intensity

Source(s): British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
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Βy Roger Harrabin

Top climate scientists have admitted they failed to predict the intensity of the German floods and the North American heat dome.

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But they say their computers are not powerful enough to accurately project the severity of those extremes.

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Computers are fundamental to weather forecasting and climate change, and computing will underpin the new climate science “Bible”, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) next month.

But former Met Office chief scientist Prof Dame Julia Slingo told BBC News: "We should be alarmed because the IPCC (climate computer) models are just not good enough.

"(We need) an international centre to deliver the quantum leap to climate models that capture the fundamental physics that drive extremes.

"Unless we do that we will continue to underestimate the intensity/frequency of extremes and the increasingly unprecedented nature of them."

[...]

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Hazards Flood Heatwave
Themes Early warning Science and technology
Country and region Canada United States of America
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