{"title":"Theoretical tools for understanding the climate crisis from Hasselmann’s programme and beyond","authors":"Valerio Lucarini, Mickaël D. Chekroun","doi":"10.1038/s42254-023-00650-8","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Klaus Hasselmann’s revolutionary intuition in climate science was to use the stochasticity associated with fast weather processes to probe the slow dynamics of the climate system. Doing so led to fundamentally new ways to study the response of climate models to perturbations, and to perform detection and attribution for climate change signals. Hasselmann’s programme has been extremely influential in climate science and beyond. In this Perspective, we first summarize the main aspects of such a programme using modern concepts and tools of statistical physics and applied mathematics. We then provide an overview of some promising scientific perspectives that might clarify the science behind the climate crisis and that stem from Hasselmann’s ideas. We show how to perform rigorous and data-driven model reduction by constructing parameterizations in systems that do not necessarily feature a timescale separation between unresolved and resolved processes. We outline a general theoretical framework for explaining the relationship between climate variability and climate change, and for performing climate change projections. This framework enables us seamlessly to explain some key general aspects of climatic tipping points. Finally, we show that response theory provides a solid framework supporting optimal fingerprinting methods for detection and attribution. Klaus Hasselmann’s viewpoint has had enormous influence in climate science, both in its theoretical and practical aspects. This Perspective provides a review of Hasselmann’s scientific programme and proposes ways forward for advancing our knowledge on the multiscale behaviour of the climate system, and on the relationship between its forced and free variability.","PeriodicalId":19024,"journal":{"name":"Nature Reviews Physics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":44.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Nature Reviews Physics","FirstCategoryId":"101","ListUrlMain":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-023-00650-8","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"物理与天体物理","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PHYSICS, APPLIED","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Klaus Hasselmann’s revolutionary intuition in climate science was to use the stochasticity associated with fast weather processes to probe the slow dynamics of the climate system. Doing so led to fundamentally new ways to study the response of climate models to perturbations, and to perform detection and attribution for climate change signals. Hasselmann’s programme has been extremely influential in climate science and beyond. In this Perspective, we first summarize the main aspects of such a programme using modern concepts and tools of statistical physics and applied mathematics. We then provide an overview of some promising scientific perspectives that might clarify the science behind the climate crisis and that stem from Hasselmann’s ideas. We show how to perform rigorous and data-driven model reduction by constructing parameterizations in systems that do not necessarily feature a timescale separation between unresolved and resolved processes. We outline a general theoretical framework for explaining the relationship between climate variability and climate change, and for performing climate change projections. This framework enables us seamlessly to explain some key general aspects of climatic tipping points. Finally, we show that response theory provides a solid framework supporting optimal fingerprinting methods for detection and attribution. Klaus Hasselmann’s viewpoint has had enormous influence in climate science, both in its theoretical and practical aspects. This Perspective provides a review of Hasselmann’s scientific programme and proposes ways forward for advancing our knowledge on the multiscale behaviour of the climate system, and on the relationship between its forced and free variability.
期刊介绍:
Nature Reviews Physics is an online-only reviews journal, part of the Nature Reviews portfolio of journals. It publishes high-quality technical reference, review, and commentary articles in all areas of fundamental and applied physics. The journal offers a range of content types, including Reviews, Perspectives, Roadmaps, Technical Reviews, Expert Recommendations, Comments, Editorials, Research Highlights, Features, and News & Views, which cover significant advances in the field and topical issues. Nature Reviews Physics is published monthly from January 2019 and does not have external, academic editors. Instead, all editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of full-time professional editors.