"Trenberth and Knutti explain climate models" Topic

link

From the article:

[…]There are many groups around the world who collaborate to advance the field while competing for the most realistic simulations. Owing to the chaotic nature of the atmospheric circulation (often depicted by the flap of a butterfly's wings changing the future weather), the detailed day-to-day weather cannot be forecast accurately more than about two weeks into the future. Many repeated computer runs with small perturbations in initial states (forming ensembles) are used to bring out the robust features. This is done even for two-week weather forecasts and is essential for climate simulations.

For climate, this means dealing with the statistics of weather. For instance, just as the weather in every winter is different, the character of winter is quite different than summer; those aspects can be simulated well. Hence the focus is on the average, the character and the variability of weather, rather than the instantaneous values.

This does not imply that we cannot predict anything, even hundreds of years from now. In much the same way as we can predict the orbits of planets around the sun for millions of years, so climate models tell us that ice will melt in a much warmer world and sea level will rise as a consequence. It takes thousands of years for the Earth to come to a new equilibrium climate even if we stop emitting carbon dioxide, and winter will still be colder than summer even in a much warmer world. The reason we can make such predictions is that the laws of physics 500 years from now are the same as today.[…]

I think I liked them better in "Trenberth and Knutti Escape from Guantanamo Bay".

They're still no "Reebo and Zooty"

zoot, Zoot, ZOOTY!

I thought they were film critics….

Awww, shucks! When I saw "climate models", I was hoping this was a Bug diverted post from the NSFW board.

So basically it is if the value is not what we want make it so it is.