Open AccessClimate model's historical accuracy no guarantee of future success
Author(s) -
Schultz Colin
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2011eo440011
Subject(s) - climatology , general circulation model , climate model , the arctic , environmental science , climate change , atmosphere (unit) , arctic , meteorology , computer science , atmospheric sciences , geography , geology , oceanography
To validate and rank the abilities of complex general circulation models (GCMs), emphasis has been placed on ensuring that they accurately reproduce the global climate of the past century. But because multiple paths can be taken to produce a given result, a model may get the right result but for the wrong reasons. Following this line of thinking, Crook and Forster analyzed the construction of 11 atmosphere‐ocean coupled GCMs. Rather than looking at the models' reproductions of twentieth‐century global average temperatures, which tend to perform well on all counts, the authors broke the models' results into their re‐creation of average, Arctic, and tropical climates. Further, they analyzed the models' treatment of climate forcings (such as solar activity), feedback systems (like Arctic ice melt or the effects of clouds), and representations of heat storage and transport mechanisms.