Hundreds of climate models forecast global climate warming this century, but they contradict each other on exactly how much warming will take place--and where. Now, Ohio State Univ. statisticians may have found a way to form a climate model consensus.
The researchers--Noel Cressie, statistics professor and director of OSU's Program in Spatial Statistics and Environmental Statistics, and former graduate student Emily Kang, now at the University of Cincinnati--used a combination of spatial statistics that Cressie pioneered to reconcile two projections of temperature increases across North America for the years 2041 to 2070. Their analysis found commonalities between the models, determined how much weight to give to each, and crunched these values into a single forecast of average temperature increase for the continent as a whole and for each region in any season of any year. (WFS) |