A simple climate change projection for the concerned public

Review
This submission has a laudable aim: To find a way in which the general public can best be informed about the way the climate is changing. It suggests that a simple correlative approach to climate change data provides a "good enough" approximation to the outputs from complex climate models - and that such an approach might be used as a basis for helping the public understand the nature of the changes that the planet and its peoples are now experiencing and will experience in future.

The paper is reasonably clearly written but is more of a magazine style than one suited to a journal that is scientifically based. It might also be considered as suitable for something like The Conversation where opinion pieces (backed by some evidence) are often worth reading and can spark useful debate.

To be published in the journal the paper would need some major revisions. This is not at all unusual for submissions to a multi-disciplinary journal. There are several areas that need attention, as follows:

(a) The main scientific issue with correlation-type approaches is that they set out relations between variables where no cause or effect is involved. They can be powerful when the cause and effect is established. It can, of course, be argued in this case that the climate models have established a form of cause and effect as has the basic physics. But the paper does not make that argument strongly enough although it might well do that if the aim of the piece were to be to use the correlative approach not as sa scientific tool but as some form of explanatory or educational one. If this is the case then the paper needs to be framed and contextualised in one or both of those ways. The paper's Introduction could be suitably strengthened to deal with this.

(b) There are three areas the public may well struggle with amidst all the discussion about climate change. Past climate and the weather associated with that, current climatic conditions and the weather associated with that, and future climate and the weather likely to be associated with that. At the heart of this is the link between climate and weather. People experience weather more than they do climate although they may talk about the "climate" of a place as being more or less favourable and meteorological services in several parts of the world use "climate" in this way (i.e. the weather averaged over a number of recent years or compared to a recent baseline). The paper needs to recognise the kinds of difficulty that this brings into the topic area a little mor than it does already. And there would be a similar issue regarding the extremes of weather (such as storms and hurricanes/typhoons) and the changed environmental conditions (such as floods or droughts) that are associated with weather extremes. Including some more the educational material on climate change and some of the material dealing with the public perception of climate in what is broadly called the "public understanding of science" may also be helpful. The journal has a commentary in the educational arena that has been recently published, and this may be helpful as a source of information. The paper needs considerable strengthening in all the above areas.

(c) It is difficult, scientifically, to extrapolate a correlative approach of any kind into the future. That is where the models that are based on physical processes using established physical and biochemical processes as their underpinning are particularly strong. They may produce variable results, but they are sufficiently well developed that it is now possible to make attributions about various extreme weather events and to look forward into the future. The modelling community is now sufficiently confident that they can take some form of average of the outputs of various models to provide a view of what is likely to happen not just globally but on region specific basis. The paper would be strengthened by looking at how helpful these approaches could be. There may not be that much difference between such averaging approaches and a correlative one but the former has the great advantage of being based on processes and mechanisms. These approaches need to be incorporated into the paper to help it attract a wider readership.

I hope these comments will help the author revise and either resubmit to this journal or to another publication that might be more suitable for the style of the material. The draft paper certainly raises important issues. We do need a way of reaching the public - especially those that remain sceptical of the scientific findings or discard them as part of a hoax or conspiracy.

Note:
This review refers to round 1 of peer review and may pertain to an earlier version of the document.

Review
Your review
Please focus on the following points in your comments.
1. Is the article relevant to UCL Open Environment aims and scope, as set out above?
2. Does it offer an original contribution to the field? Is it breaking new ground? If so, how?
3. Does it engage with recent scholarship?
4. What are the strengths of its argument and analysis? Do you have suggestions for improvement?
5. Is the overall style and presentation good? Do you have suggestions for improvement?
6. Is the article’s length appropriate for what it has to say? Suggestions for shortening papers that extend over 8,000 words (excluding references) are welcome.

Ad 1.
I think the article is relevant, but I do not know how much new knowledge it adds. I assume that many people around the world are trying to make the IPCC reports accessible to the wider public. There is no mention in this article about other efforts in this direction.
Ad 2.
See above. I have personally not seen literature looking to use trend lines in this way, but I can’t help but think that it exists.
Ad 3.
The article definitely engages with a wide range of literature, including academic scholarly literature.
Ad 4.
I think the argument and analysis are largely sound, but not presented in a way that make it easy to understand. The figures are clear in themselves, but the argument made on the basis of them is about the steepness of the trend lines, which look exactly the same on first glance, most likely because of the scale used on the axes. There must be ways that make this clearer. I wonder whether a collaboration with an education expert might improve the presentation of the argument through figures and text. If a teacher can explain it to a teenager, it is probably appropriate for the general public.
I was not totally enamoured with section 3.2 (non-linear extrapolations). There was a largely emotionally laden, although mostly thoroughly referenced, summing up of parameters which may or may not contribute to the need for non-linear extrapolations, which, in my eyes, did not argue the case appropriately. And there was one sentence in that section which I did not understand at all:
“Climate-related loss and damage has to be made good”. I wondered where that sentence came from, what it means, and who thinks so.
I am also struggling with the use of the term ‘less cautious’. I find it confusing in this context. It started to fall into place for me a little bit more when I read about statistical confidence. But as the author is keen to help public understanding, I think resorting to statistical confidence is not helpful, even if it is academically sound.
Ad 5.
See Ad 4.
Ad 6.
I read the article with interest, and I think there is something in it. Seeing as it represents one independent researcher’s work, it deserves attention somehow. But in its present form I am doubtful that it will make much of an impact.

Note:
This review refers to round 1 of peer review and may pertain to an earlier version of the document.