Event date:  March 9, 2015

Event location:  ATAC 1003

Time:  7:30pm to 8:30pm

Abstract

The recent slowdown or "hiatus" in global surface temperature rise since around the turn of this century is a hot topic for climate scientists, policy makers and the informed public alike. Also hotly debated are the reasons why the vast majority of climate models used to predict future change in global surface temperature failed to anticipate the hiatus. In my presentation I will describe some of our recent findings, and the findings of others, which have made clearer the nature of the hiatus, the mechanisms underlying it, and the reasons why climate models failed to predict it. In parallel with the global warming hiatus, but for reasons of its own, Arctic sea-ice decline has also recently paused, which our new findings suggest could continue for a decade or two into the future before returning to its inescapable human-induced decline.

About the Speaker

After finishing his PhD at McGill University, John Fyfe worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University prior to joining the University of British Columbia 1989 where he spent three years as an assistant professor in the department of Oceanography. Fyfe is currently a senior research scientist with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, an Environment Canada Laboratory located in Victoria, British Columbia. Fyfe has authored or coauthored over 90 peer-reviewed papers in climate, meteorology and oceanography.

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