Commentary: Surprises in the Climate Change Course

Abstract

Climate was always changing, but the rates and amplitudes of the changes now seem to be somewhat larger than those, say, extracted from tree rings or paleorecords of various kinds. The last Ipcc-5 report for the first time said that there is a discernible signal of the human influence on the climate changes during the last three decades. In the 20th century we have observed surprisingly large regional climatic changes of considerable duration such as Arctic warming in 1920–30, Sahel drought, and drastic changes in the level of the Caspian Sea: a dramatic fall in the 1930s and the continuous rise since 1978. These surprises cause large socio-economic problems and in the cases of the Sahel and the Caspian Sea require great geopolitical considerations because they involve many countries. We believe that the climate models should strive for prediction of such surprising changes and thus to serve their societal purpose. Here we briefly describe the last problem, that of the Caspian Sea and will try to outline a perspective of how the goal might be achieved.