New climate models now project even faster global warming than previous work. The models were developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Princeton, NJ), the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, CO) and six other international computational centers. If correct, these new studies give world leaders far less of a “runway” to avoid even more serious climate degradation. Older climate change models predicted that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would produce global temperature increases of between 2.5-5 degrees C. The new models suggest that previous estimates were too conservative, and that doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide will produce 5 degrees C. or more of global warming in the future. Climate scientists are not sure why the new models project far higher temperatures. That question may be answered after researchers run the international, cooperative Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), which will go over the models […]