CL2

Climate change assessments of trends and variability
Convener: Albert M.G. Klein Tank 

Climate change is at the forefront of much scientific study, and has been suggested by some to be one of the greatest problems affecting the future of our society. IPCC in 2007 stated that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal, but for some action by society has to first see changes and impacts locally. IPCC also concluded that the cause of the warming was very likely (>90% certainty) to be due to human modification of the composition of the atmosphere, but again this has only been demonstrated at large, continental scales. The aim of the session will be studies that bridge the spatial scales and reach the timescales of extreme events that impact all our lives.

Topics for which papers are invited are: trends in regional climate, not just the mean, but variability and extremes, often for the latter measured through well-chosen indices, impacts of climate change in rapidly responding sectors, and papers that combine with climate modelling to attempt to attain end-to-end attribution of changes to human factors.