climate models – Quanta Magazine

Physicists Pinpoint the Quantum Origin of the Greenhouse Effect

Joseph Howlett — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 14:25:32 +0000

In 1896, the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius realized that carbon dioxide (CO2) traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere — the phenomenon now called the greenhouse effect. Since then, increasingly sophisticated modern climate models have verified Arrhenius’ central conclusion: that every time the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere doubles, Earth’s temperature will rise between 2 and 5 degrees Celsius.

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Chaos Researchers Can Now Predict Perilous Points of No Return

Ben Brubaker — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 14:17:38 +0000

Predicting complex systems like the weather is famously difficult. But at least the weather’s governing equations don’t change from one day to the next. In contrast, certain complex systems can undergo “tipping point” transitions, suddenly changing their behavior dramatically and perhaps irreversibly, with little warning and potentially catastrophic consequences. On long enough timescales...

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Powerful ‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data

Charlie Wood — Tue, 10 May 2022 14:30:43 +0000

In 2017, Roger Guimerà and Marta Sales-Pardo discovered a cause of cell division, the process driving the growth of living beings. But they couldn’t immediately reveal how they learned the answer. The researchers hadn’t spotted the crucial pattern in their data themselves. Rather, an unpublished invention of theirs — a digital assistant they called the “machine scientist” — had handed it to them.

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Work on Earth’s Climate and Other Complex Systems Earns Nobel Prize in Physics

Natalie Wolchover — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 09:52:38 +0000

Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann have been honored for their work that led to reliable predictions of the effects of climate change. They will share the Nobel with Giorgio Parisi, who has made pioneering studies of chaotic physical systems.

The post Work on Earth’s Climate and Other Complex Systems Earns Nobel Prize in Physics first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A Soil-Science Revolution Upends Plans to Fight Climate Change

Gabriel Popkin — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 16:33:34 +0000

The hope was that the soil might save us. With civilization continuing to pump ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, perhaps plants — nature’s carbon scrubbers — might be able to package up some of that excess carbon and bury it underground for centuries or longer. That hope has fueled increasingly ambitious climate change–mitigation plans. Researchers at the Salk...

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