10 thoughts on “Future Temperature Forecasts”

  1. The two findings are not strictly comparable. The 2007 report talks about equilibrium temperatures in the very long term (over centuries); the forthcoming one talks about them in 2100.

    The two are not even vaguely comparable, because of the hydrospheres huge heat capacity most of the surface warming will be “in the pipeline” for centuries.

    1. Where’s your evidence for such a claim? I’m not contesting the claim that oceans don’t have a massive heat capacity, but rather the claim that they aren’t well coupled thermally on the order of centuries to the rest of the climate.

      For example, rainfall, one of the means to transfer heat between ocean and atmosphere, effectively recycles the oceans completely in a bit over 3 millennia. That still leaves the door open, but it is one of several methods for transferring heat.

      1. Where’s your evidence for such a claim?

        The fact that global surface temperatures can change over periods of less than centuries.

    1. The oceans have been acting as a heat sink since temperatures started rising, if temperatures were to fall significantly they’d act as a heat source.

      1. You did not address the question, and your reasoning is ex-post-facto rationalization in any case.

  4. Actually, humans don’t know much about natural surface or ocean temperature variability. We have been measuring with poor methodology for less than 200 years. Sorry, but that is pitiful compared to the 12-15 thousand years since the last ‘ice age’ or, even worse, the last 2-3 billion years or so when it is thought that significant biological processes started altering the earth’s atmosphere.

    The fact that we can not accurately predict weather out past a few days in the future says everything about the state of our ‘climate’ competence.

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