U. forecast: Climate data working well
The report, "How Well do Coupled Models Simulate Today's Climate?" was published Friday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, headquartered in Boston. Carried out by Thomas Reichler, assistant professor, and Junsu Kim, graduate research assistant, both in the U.'s meteorology department, it is the first comparative study of entire generations of climate prediction models, the study notes.
Coupled climate models use mathematical models of two or more components of Earth's climate, such as the effects of the seas and the atmosphere. The abstract of the new study notes that Reichler and Kim tested "the realism of several generations of coupled climate models." These are models used for reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued in 1995, 2001 and 2007.
Models used for the publications date from the mid-1990s, called Climate Model Intercomparison Project-1; a follow-up from 2003, CMIP-2; and the latest model, which is CMIP-3.
"It is difficult to test how well those models work, in particularly because those models predict future climate," Reichler said in a telephone interview. But one way is to check their success in simulating present-day climate, "for which we have good observations."
"The latest generation of models is actually doing a very, very good job in simulating today's features," Reichler said. "We see this nice progression in models' improvement."
CMIP-3 simulations were superior, the Bulletin's report says, mostly because of "drastic model improvements."
Climate prediction models are getting better, Reichler said, "and we can have more confidence in prediction of future climate."
So what's the best guess about what will happen? Actually, there is no answer because that depends at least partly on the unforseeable, such as humankind's actions.
One possibility shown by the models is that the world's climate will warm about 7 degrees Fahrenheit in a century. But Reichler pointed out that this might not happen. "That depends on which scenario you use; it's just a kind of rough number," he said.
It may not happen if, for example, the world finds a good way to curb greenhouse gases. How much emissions are reduced will affect the ultimate temperature chance.
But what if humans do a poor job controlling carbon dioxide pollution? What if temperature and greenhouse gases keep increasing long beyond the next century?
A continuing build-up of carbon dioxide emissions and the consequently warming conjure up visions of Venus.
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