Publications by authors named "David M H Sexton"

In addition to influencing climatic conditions directly through radiative forcing, increasing carbon dioxide concentration influences the climate system through its effects on plant physiology. Plant stomata generally open less widely under increased carbon dioxide concentration, which reduces transpiration and thus leaves more water at the land surface. This driver of change in the climate system, which we term 'physiological forcing', has been detected in observational records of increasing average continental runoff over the twentieth century.

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Inference in ensemble experiments.

Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci

August 2007

We consider inference based on ensembles of climate model evaluations, and contrast the Monte Carlo approach, in which the evaluations are selected at random from the model-input space, with a more overtly statistical approach using emulators and experimental design.

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Article Synopsis
  • Comprehensive global climate models are essential for understanding future climate change, capturing the complex interactions that influence global and regional impacts.
  • Planners often face a variety of predictions from these models, but there's considerable uncertainty regarding their accuracy and reliability.
  • This study uses a 53-member ensemble of climate models to estimate how sensitive the climate is to doubled carbon dioxide levels, yielding a projected temperature increase of 2.4 to 5.4 degrees Celsius, with greater variability in regional changes than traditional methods suggest.
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