Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change Science: Predictions for the World’s Temperature to Hit 1.5 by the Year 2050 in a High-Pollution Scenario
The world’s temperature would hit 2 degrees by the year 2050 in a high-pollution scenario. The machine learning predicted that pollution could be mitigated until 2054.
The report stated, “Our results provide further evidence for high- impact climate change over the next three decades.”
The world is on the verge of the 1.5 degree mark in any realistic emissions reduction scenario according to a study co-author. Avoiding a 2-degree rise, he said, may depend on nations meeting zero-emissions goals by the middle of this century.
Scientists have identified 1.5 degrees of warming as a key tipping point beyond which the chances of extreme flooding, drought, wildfires and food shortages will increase dramatically.
The study used artificial neural networks, which are a type of machine learning or artificial intelligence that scientists trained on climate models and then used historical observations of temperature around the world to make predictions.
There are three different climate pathways that involve the degree of heating caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The government makes a statement each year at a UN summit about how they have kept 1.5 alive. There’s a disagreement among scientists on how true that really is. Diffenbaugh said there’s been so much warming already that it really doesn’t matter how pollution is cut in the next several years, the world will hit 1.5, the AI figures.
Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the Diffenbaugh study but was part of the IPCC, said the study makes sense, fits with what scientists know, but seems a bit more pessimistic.
There’s a lot of power in using AI and in the future that may be shown to produce better projections, but more evidence is needed before concluding that, Mahowald said.
“We’re using this very powerful tool that is able to take information and integrate it in a way that no human mind is able to do, for better or for worse,” Diffenbaugh said.
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Other scientists not involved with the study, such as University of Pennsylvania’s Michael Mann and Climate Analytics’ Bill Hare and Carl-Friedrich Schleussner maintain 1.5 is still alive. The world can mostly keep under the threshold, even in a rapid decarbonization scenario that is not examined by Diffenbaugh.