Category Archives: Climate Change

Can humanity maintain perpetual economic growth?

Posted on September 9, 2017 by ptbrown31

…to understand modern economic history, you really need to understand just a single word. The word is growth. –from Sapiens (2014) Humanity is far more materially wealthy today than any time in the past and our collective wealth continues to … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change | 2 Comments

Credibility through honesty about uncertainty

Posted on August 1, 2017 by ptbrown31

An argument that I often encounter is that uncertainties in climate science shouldn’t be publicly emphasized since that will make it harder to inspire action on proposed climate policies. It is thought that publicly highlighting a lack of knowledge/understanding on … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change | 1 Comment

Modeled vs. observed global temperature: with and without ‘makeup’

Posted on July 10, 2017 by ptbrown31

Global average surface air temperature is one of the most well-recognized metrics of contemporary climate change – hence the term ‘global warming’. One reason for this is that many impacts of climate change are expected to be proportional to the … Continue reading →

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Climate Science for People Really in a Hurry

Posted on May 2, 2017 by ptbrown31
Posted in Climate Change | 3 Comments

Why do climate models disagree on the size of global temperature variability?

Posted on December 5, 2016 by ptbrown31

We have published a new paper titled “Spread in the magnitude of climate model interdecadal global temperature variability traced to disagreements over high-latitude oceans“. Here is a brief summary: Natural unforced variability in global mean surface air temperature (GMST) is … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change | 9 Comments

Video Summary of my PhD Dissertation

Posted on November 2, 2016 by ptbrown31

 

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The stability of unforced global temperature – In plain english

Posted on February 5, 2016 by ptbrown31

We have new published research that shows in detail why the earth’s temperature remains stable when it is not pushed by outside forcings. Below is a summary in plain english. For a more technical discussion see here. The study is all about what … Continue reading →

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The stability of unforced global temperature – Technical Discussion

Posted on January 31, 2016 by ptbrown31

We have new published research that has implications for why global mean surface air temperature (GMT) is stable in the absence of external radiative forcings. One of the central differences between weather prediction and climate projection is that the former is considered … Continue reading →

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2015 Record Warmth: Update to Our Recent Analysis

Posted on January 25, 2016 by ptbrown31

This is an update to our 2015 Scientific Reports paper: Comparing the model-simulated global warming signal to observations using empirical estimates of unforced noise. The paper used a novel statistical estimate of unforced variability that was derived from reconstructed and instrumental surface … Continue reading →

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Heat waves: How much can be blamed on global warming depends on how you ask the question.

Posted on January 5, 2016 by ptbrown31

The text below is an extended version of a peer-reviewed article that appeared in Physics Today: Brown, P. T. (2016) Reporting on global warming: A study in headlines, Physics Today, doi:10.1063/PT.3.3310 It is well established that human-caused increases in greenhouse … Continue reading →

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