Energy and Climate: understanding

climate change

Myles Allen
Department of Physics, University of Oxford
myles.allen@physics.ox.ac.uk

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Myth: this is why we should be worried about
climate change

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Fact: this is why I am worried about
climate change

Photo: Dave Mitchell

South Oxford on January 5th, 2003
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 Common myths about climate change

 “Climate varies: human actions don’t matter.”

 “Human induced climate change is real, and is
clearly to blame for yesterday’s flood/hurricane/etc.”
 “We have no idea what is going to happen next.”
 “We know exactly what is going to happen next.”
 “We are rapidly approaching a Point of No Return…”
 “It’s cheaper just to adapt to climate change than try
to do anything about it.”
 “Addressing climate change requires a fundamental
change in the way we live and relate to the world.”

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“Climate has always varied, so human influence
is nothing to worry about.”

Luke Clenell
Frost fair on the Thames, 1814
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Climate has changed a great deal in the distant
past

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But not so much recently: Northern Hemisphere
temperatures over the past 1800 years

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 And we can explain these changes: mostly the
response to solar and volcanic activity until 1850

Simulations
Reconstructions

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Volcanic eruptions: the main external driver of
short-term fluctuations

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Solar variability: the main external driver of
long-term fluctuations -- until recently

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Anthropogenic drivers of climate change

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We can’t explain recent changes without human
influence

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And we can explain them if we include human
influence

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It’s a complete myth that we can explain
everything as a response to solar activity

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It’s a complete myth that we can explain
everything as a response to solar activity

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 So what is going to happen next?
Carbon dioxide 1000-2100

Note different scale! Source: IPCC

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Model simulations of future climate

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Myth: not all scientists agree that this warming
will continue if GHG levels continue to rise

Climate response to
the IS92a scenario
of future emissions,
Pat Michaels predicted by 2001
(2000, 2004) IPCC models and by
Patrick Michaels, a
prominent critic of
the IPCC
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Fact: all scientists agree that this warming
will continue if GHG levels continue to rise

Climate response to
the IS92a scenario
of future emissions,
Pat Michaels predicted by 2001
+ 7 years IPCC models and by
Patrick Michaels, a
prominent critic of
the IPCC
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Myth: global changes don’t matter, and you’re only
personally at risk from climate change if you live
somewhere photogenic

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The European heat-wave of 2003

From NASA’s
MODIS - Moderate
Resolution Imaging
Spectrometer,
courtesy of Reto
Stöckli, ETHZ

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Excess mortality rates in early August 2003
indicate 22,000 - 35,000 heat-related deaths

Daily mortality in Baden-Württemberg

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Modelling Southern European summer
temperatures

Future projection

Instrumental
observations

Natural drivers only

All drivers included

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Changing risks of European heat-waves

Return periods for European heat­waves

P1
P0

9x increase in risk

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More warm summers may sound nice for Oxford:
the real issues for us are less pleasant

Photo courtesy of Dave Mitchell
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Floods have happened before: historic levels at
Shillingford on Thames

2003

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The problem in Autumn 2000 and January 2003:
a consistently displaced Atlantic jet-stream
The Atlantic Jet Stream (500hPa wind speed)
Autumn climatology (colours) & Autumn 2000 (contours)

Blackburn & Hoskins, 2003

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But the jet-stream varies with the weather: how
can we pin down the role of climate change?

Chaos and the difference between weather and climate:

Edward Lorenz, 1982 (possibly quoting Mark Twain)
 “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you

get”
and in the 21st century:
 “Climate is what you affect, weather is what gets

you”
We can quantify human influence on climate, but it is
weather events that actually do damage (global
warming itself hurts nobody).

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Direct estimation of Fraction Attributable Risk
(Pall et al, 2007)

 The question: what would climate (weather risk)

have been if we had not raised greenhouse gas
levels, all other things being equal?
 Generate a multi-thousand-member ensemble
simulation of April 2000 – March 2001 using a
forecast-resolution global atmospheric model.
 Identical “non-industrial” ensemble, removing the
influence of increased greenhouse gases, including
estimated GHG influence on sea-surface
temperatures.
 Repeat 40 times, allowing for uncertainty in pattern
and size of response to greenhouse warming.

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Large ensembles required, so we use distributed
computing: http://attribution.cpdn.org

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The world’s largest climate modelling facility

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Autumn 2000
as observed
(ERA-40
reanalysis)…

…and in one
of the wetter
members of
our ensemble.

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Return-times for total autumn rainfall before and
after removing estimated influence of
greenhouse warming to date

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 “It’s cheaper just to adapt to climate change
rather than trying to do anything about it.”

 Lots of factors contribute to this myth:

– Estimates of the cost tend to ignore or understate the role
of extreme weather, which is the main short-term impact.
– Cost estimates are typically net costs: fine if you are a
government bureaucrat, less useful if you’re a homeowner.
– Hype over “tipping points” has probably given you the
impression it’s too late to do much about it anyway.
 The “10 years from Doom” myth:
– Greenhouse gas levels are already well over 400ppm CO2-
equivalent and approaching 450ppm.
– Even stabilizing at 450ppm is likely to cause around 2oC of
warming, and carries a substantial risk of more than 3oC.

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 Understanding why we aren’t 10 years from
Doom

 CO2-equivalent is deeply misleading because the

main other greenhouse gas directly affected by
human activity (methane) has a much shorter
lifetime in the atmosphere (about a decade, rather
than centuries). We aren’t “committed” to current
methane levels.
 Even CO2 can go down as well as up. If we find the
climate is warming more than we currently expect,
we can adjust policies accordingly: it’ll just be more
expensive to avoid the same level of climate change.

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 Why it is so hard to determine a “level of GHG
concentrations that will avoid dangerous
anthropogenic interference in the climate system.”

Shading denotes likelihood

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But it doesn’t matter, because we (specifically, you)
can use the warming we observe to revise targets

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So uncertainty in the very long-term response
doesn’t matter

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Myth: nothing we can do will make much
difference anyway

Data from Peter Cox

Comparing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels with
and without post-1990 emissions
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 Fact: by the 2030s, most excess CO2 in the
atmosphere will be due to post-1990 emissions

Data from Peter Cox

Comparing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels with
and without post-1990 emissions
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 Myth: “Solving climate change requires a
fundamental change in the way we live and interact
with each other and the world”
 This is the Big Myth: Everyone wants it to be true.
 Environmentalists want us to believe we need to
change the way we live, because they don’t like it.
 Fossil fuel companies want us to believe it is all our
fault (so we feel guilty, but keep driving).
 Anti-Capitalists want us to believe it is proof of the
Failure of Capitalism.
 The strange thing is, it isn’t true.

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Fact: we can afford to pay a lot more for fossil
fuels than it costs to dig them up

$100 oil: a problem, or an

opportunity?

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Fossil fuels are so useful, so profitable, that we
can afford to use them sustainably

 With the combined profit and

taxes you pay on petrol…
 …existing technologies
could be used to capture the
carbon dioxide generated by
burning that petrol and bury
it back underground…
 …and the oil exporter and
distribution company would
still make money.
 We still have a problem: but
Carbon capture and is it the problem you thought
storage projects: we had?
In Salah Gas Field,
Algeria, and North Sea

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