Invest in Climate Science to Save Money
Thursday, 27. August 2009, 18:42:02
“Predictions of regional climate change for the next few decades are characterised by high uncertainty, but this uncertainty is potentially reducible through investments in climate science.”
This conclusion may not be new, but I find it nice to see it backed up by new research published by scientists from the UK's National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) in the scientific journal, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The study shows that investments made now, can lead to as much as 10-20% improvement in climate predictions for the UK and Europe in the coming decades, and up to 20% across the rest of the globe.
As some (climate) science bloggers have pointed out adaptation to climate change may be a smarter way forward than climate engineering (also known as geoengineering). Anyway a certain amount of climate change is inevitable, and we will certainly need to adapt. Policy-makers currently need better predictions to aid planning for adaptation to climate change in the coming years, and such improvements could present enormous economic savings: uncertainty in climate forecasts means that adaptation measures have to be designed with greater resilience, making them more expensive.
“Because the costs of adaptation are expected to be very large, the clear implication is that reducing uncertainty in climate predictions is potentially of enormous economic value.”
Invest more in climate science - NOW!
Reference:
Hawkins and Sutton
The potential to narrow uncertainty in regional climate predictions
2009 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
doi: 10.1175/2009BAMS2607.1
(So far only preliminary version)
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http://www.ncas.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=567&Itemid=190
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http://www.sciencecodex.com/targeted_investments_in_climate_science_could_present_enormous_economic_savings_across_the_globe
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http://www.physorg.com/news169898504.html
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