Climate Forecasters Should Share Studies More to Help, Science Body Says

Climate researchers need to do a better job of sharing their studies to raise the effectiveness of their findings for insurance companies and farmers, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said.

The research community should increase collaboration with the public by holding workshops and through researcher exchanges with weather centers, The National Academy of Science said in a report on its website. Establishing public archives of forecasts would improve transparency, it said.

Errors uncovered earlier this year in a report by the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sparked claims by climate skeptics including U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, that the Earth isn’t being warmed by human-caused carbon emissions. A review of the IPCC by economists and scientists at the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council published last month recommended greater transparency and changes to the UN-sponsored body’s management structure.

Sustained observation of “complex climate processes” such as the role of clouds in the global climate system is also necessary to help correct errors that show up in models, the academy said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jeremy van Loon in Berlin at jvanloon@bloomberg.net

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