2007/10/25 by Gerard H. Roe, M. B. Baker · 14 citations
Energy · Environmental Science · Mathematics · #Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics #Atmospheric sciences #Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere #Climate change #Climate model #Climate sensitivity #Climate variability and models #Climatology #Environmental science #Geology #Global Energy and Sustainability Research #Mathematics #Physics #Probability distribution #Sensitivity (control systems) #Statistical physics #Statistics #Term (time) #Thermodynamics #Yield (engineering)
paper · doi:10.1126/science.1144735
openalex publication_date 2007/10/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Uncertainties in projections of future climate change have not lessened substantially in past decades. Both models and observations yield broad probability distributions for long-term increases in global mean temperature expected from the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, with small but finite probabilities of very large increases. We show that the shape of these probability distributions is an inevitable and general consequence of the nature of the climate system, and we derive a simple analytic form for the shape that fits recent published distributions very well. We show that the breadth of the distribution and, in particular, the probability of large temperature increases are relatively insensitive to decreases in uncertainties associated with the underlying climate processes.