New Climatology Results for Western US Drought Experiment

We now have the first results for our Climatological simulations, investigating the influence of removing the ‘blob’ of warm sea surface temperatures off the western US coast.

The ‘blob’ has a strong influence on the temperature, for example the climatological simulations without the ‘blob’ are colder than the actual or natural simulations.

In the climatological simulations, it is interesting to see a different response in the precipitation between the different states. This is something our scientists will be investigating in more detail in the upcoming weeks.

There are 3 plots for each state, here’s one of them showing temperature in California. The experiment is looking at two possible influences on the drought in the Western US – climate change and the “blob”. In the plot below, there are 3 sets of data:

“Actual” – these are models that use observed data to simulate the climate
“Natural” – these are models that show a “world that might have been without climate change”
“Climatology” – these are models that include climate change, as observed, but have removed the “blob”

There are still a few thousand models left to run, so please do sign up if you haven’t already, and help us answer this fascinating and important question!