{"id":1278,"date":"2014-11-12T14:24:54","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T19:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=1278"},"modified":"2021-10-18T11:18:33","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T15:18:33","slug":"a-couple-of-great-articles-on-climate-modeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2014\/11\/a-couple-of-great-articles-on-climate-modeling\/","title":{"rendered":"Three interesting articles on climate modeling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Climate modeling is something that is often attacked by those who are skeptical about projections of future changes in climate.\u00a0 Today I saw three articles which I think do an excellent job of explaining some of the difficulties with climate modeling.<\/p>\n<p>The first is a blog posting on our sister site, <em>Animal Agriculture in a Changing Climat<\/em>e, on why climate models have not been able to capture the apparent pause in the warming temperature trend sine 1998 that has been noted by many climatologists.\u00a0 Here is the direct link to the blog: <a title=\"Why the earth has not warmed since 1998\" href=\"https:\/\/animalagclimatechange.org\/earth-hasnt-warmed-since-1998\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/animalagclimatechange.org\/earth-hasnt-warmed-since-1998\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The second is an op ed published in the New York Times by a climate scientist and former astronaut on explaining climate models to politicians.\u00a0 You can find that <a title=\"NYT wobbling on climate change\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/11\/12\/opinion\/wobbling-on-climate-change.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The third <a title=\"MIT climate modeling mystery solved\" href=\"https:\/\/newsoffice.mit.edu\/2014\/global-warming-increased-solar-radiation-1110\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">article<\/a> was published by MIT News and discusses how a mystery about understanding output from climate models was resolved.<\/p>\n<p>Keep in mind that weather models and climate models have some similarities but are built to fundamentally different things.\u00a0 Sort of like comparing a Ferrari to a Ford F-150 pickup.\u00a0 Both have four wheels and an internal combustion engine, but are designed to do different things.\u00a0 A Ferrari is designed to look good and go fast; a pickup is designed to be rugged and haul a lot.\u00a0 I doubt that anyone would want to take a Ferrari out spreading manure (although it might be fun!).\u00a0 In the same way, a weather model is designed to predict weather over short time scales and get the details like temperature and rainfall right, but they are terrible for long term prediction, an anything over a week is just guessing (contrary to some commercial forecasting firms&#8217; claims).\u00a0 A climate model is designed to get the long-term climate patterns right but are not so good at modeling things like hurricanes which are small in size and brief in time.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1280\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1280\" style=\"width: 404px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2014\/11\/640px-Global_Climate_Model.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1280\" src=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2014\/11\/640px-Global_Climate_Model-300x197.png\" alt=\"Source: NOAA\" width=\"404\" height=\"265\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2014\/11\/640px-Global_Climate_Model-300x197.png 300w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2014\/11\/640px-Global_Climate_Model-209x138.png 209w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2014\/11\/640px-Global_Climate_Model.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 404px) 100vw, 404px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1280\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: NOAA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Climate modeling is something that is often attacked by those who are skeptical about projections of future changes in climate.\u00a0 Today I saw three articles which I think do an excellent job of explaining some of the difficulties with climate modeling. The first is a blog posting on our sister site, Animal Agriculture in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":1280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22921,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions\/22921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}