From ocean warming to the disappearance of Arctic sea ice, climate change is impacting our world in profound ways. Scientists track these changes by analyzing data from Earth-observing satellites, ships and buoys in the ocean, airplanes flying overhead, tree rings and ice cores. Then they build mathematical models of Earth’s atmosphere, ocean and land (the cryosphere) to simulate how the system may respond to various forces such as solar radiation or human activities. The resulting equations include representations of the physical, chemical and biological processes that influence climate and run on powerful computers.
The science behind this work is complex. And while scientists have come to a broad consensus on how humans contribute to climate change—and that the effects will be dramatic, even catastrophic—predicting exactly how fast and how much the Earth’s temperature will rise is a major challenge.
As a result, research on climate change is being splintered into a number of distinct fields such as paleoclimatology, which studies past climates, and attribution science, which attempts to quantify the causes of recent global warming by examining factors like atmospheric composition and carbon dioxide concentration. Researchers also pursue a variety of modelling approaches, both statistical and mathematical, to help interpret and predict future climates.
PNNL’s researchers are among those who continue to work on these pressing questions and apply the knowledge they gain to improve our ability to anticipate and respond to the impacts of climate change. They use geospatial and hydrological modeling, high-performance computing, and other tools to document environmental trends and predict the implications of those trends for our lives, from hurricanes to the expansion of disease-carrying insect ranges or the shifting distribution of migratory species.