Chris Smith
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cjsmith.be
Chris Smith
@cjsmith.be

Climate scientist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel & IIASA. IPCC AR7 CLA. Responsive climate projections. The guy behind the fair model and radiative forcing barchart. Occasional runner and guitarist.
github.com/chrisroadmap | cjsmith.eu .. more

Environmental science 46%
Geography 15%

Cool, thanks Abby! I was aware of this paper but don't think I cited it (my bad) - the running to 2300 is there and we can compare the carbon sinks, but the experiments were concentration-driven, and didn't include the lower scenarios, and they don't have NorESM, which is a super interesting model!

Unfortunately not. These were from the CMIP6 ESGF - was really a shame that not many models extended beyond 2100.

A sneak peak of hopefully what is to come in CMIP7. We ran two CMIP6 climate models in CO2 emissions driven mode to 2300 - and the responses in the long term are very different.

Preprint: egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...

I should have known this...

There are 1.5°C no and low overshoot scenarios in AR5, but they are cooler in 2020 than we have observed, suggesting that mitigation would have started in the 2010s.

It would be good to do this consistently harmonized in the same simple climate model

yeh, precisely this! I mean, one of the successes of the Paris Agreement (or failure of pre-Paris climate policy?) is that nobody was really looking at 1.5°C scenarios before 2016. I'm just interested to see if anyone has done a like-for-like climate comparison. If not, I might :)

Has anybody ever looked at the IPCC AR5 scenario database and run them in a simple climate model? I'm curious to know how many would get close to 1.5°C - probably not many if the earliest net zero CO2 date is ~2060. Interesting to see how ambition has evolved over time at the low end

Really important paper led by my @iiasa.ac.at colleague Alex Nauels www.nature.com/articles/s41...
“The difference between decisive climate action today and continued high emissions is not just measured in degrees of warming but also in meters of sea-level rise” 👏👏👏
Multi-century global and regional sea-level rise commitments from cumulative greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades - Nature Climate Change
It is important to understand how much long-term sea-level rise is already committed due to historical and near-term emissions. Here the authors use a modelling framework to show how decisions on glob...
www.nature.com

windows will restart now

How to contribute to fair:
✅submit a pull request
✅wait 6 months
✅track me down in person and remind me to review it

v2.2.3 now available at the usual places.

pypi.org/project/fair
anaconda.org/conda-forge/fair
Fair | Anaconda.org
anaconda.org

I know!!! I was outvoted

If you want to get your simple climate model picked up by IPCC AR7, see below 👇

We have 11 on our radar from the previous round of RCMIP (egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...), plus a few others we found since.

Anybody we don't know about please ping me or Alex

send me a PM :)

Belspo press release on the Belgian contribution to IPCC AR7:

FR: www.belspo.be/belspo/organ...
NL: www.belspo.be/belspo/organ...
EN: google translate ;)
Communiqué de presse | Belspo
Une fierté, mais aussi une responsabilité pour la Belgique
www.belspo.be

Now that it's public, I'm very honoured to be selected as Coordinating Lead Author of Chapter 5, Working Group I for the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report 📚🌍

Our chapter is one hell of a team!

Full author list for all three working groups: apps.ipcc.ch/report/autho...
IPCC Authors
apps.ipcc.ch

also very willing to help if you get stuck. Sorry the new interface is clunky - I went speed over intuition.

turns out I'm an idiot and can't link to papers

egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...
egusphere.copernicus.org

A deep dive into the world of simple climate models: preprint out from @arp-climate.bsky.social.

we know this isn't exhaustive - we focus on the models that participated in RCMIP phases 1 and 2. There will be a phase 3, coming soon.

Reposted by Chris Smith

How much warming? That is where simple modelling can help. Turns out that the temperature response to the observed reduction in planetary albedo since December 2020 (estimated from a simple energy-balance #model, doi.org/10.1175/JCLI...) may explain the warming ‘gap’ of about 0.2K. (7/8)

Reposted by Chris Smith

This water vapour input (green) more than offset the small cooling effect from a increase in stratospheric aerosol optical depth (blue), resulting in a net volcanic radiative forcing (purple) that is above the long-term quiescent baseline value for 2022-2024.

We (@tim-andrews.bsky.social, Ryan Kramer and I) are leading a session around understanding radiative forcing in models at the CMIP Community Workshop in Kyoto, Japan, next March. Abstract submissions open until 13 August:

wcrp-cmip.org/event/cmip20...
Session ID #4
CMIP Community Workshop 2026 - Coupled Model Intercomparison Project
The CMIP Community Workshop 2026 will bring together a growing, and increasingly diverse, community of Earth system scientists, partners, and stakeholders. It
wcrp-cmip.org

Including a climate module and climate damages within a process-based integrated assessment model: meet FRIDA.

egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...
Introducing FRIDA v2.1: A feedback-based, fully coupled, global integrated assessment model of climate and humans
Abstract. The current crop of models assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to produce their assessment reports lack endogenous process-based representations of climate-drive...
egusphere.copernicus.org

Hello world, who else is in Vienna this week?

In this Carbon Brief post we talk about the implications of not including future volcanic eruptions in climate scenarios, as described in our recent paper: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Reposted by Chris Smith

It's that time of year again!

I'll be in Bonn covering the #SB62 UN climate talks until the end of the week with @mollylempriere.carbonbrief.org

Keen to hear the hot takes on climate finance, loss and damage and anything else you think is interesting

Reposted by Joeri Rogelj

I'll be giving a short talk on 1.5°C at a mini-symposium at VUB on Friday 6 June as part of an event celebrating the award of an honorary doctorate to @joerirogelj.bsky.social, see below for details and registration!
Van harte welkom op het symposium "In gesprek met topklimaatwetenschapper Joeri Rogelj" nu vrijdag 9-12h @vubrussel.bsky.social, met keynote van @joerirogelj.bsky.social en korte lezingen van @cjsmith.be, @cohelongo.bsky.social, @harryzeko.bsky.social & mezelf. receptie. www.vub.be/nl/evenement...
In gesprek met topklimaatwetenschapper Joeri Rogelj | 6 juni 2025
Mis de keynote van Joeri Rogelj niet, die is aangevuld met sprekers uit domeinen zoals klimaatwetenschap, beleid, scenario's en rechtszaken.
www.vub.be