I’m a climate scientist with a PhD in meteorology from the University of Oslo.
Recent Posts
Documentation of the simple dynamical core part 2: Continuous equations
Documentation of the simple dynamical core part 1: Introduction
Cultures of simulations vs. cultures of calculations revisited
Cultures of simulations vs. cultures of calculations: A look at Sundberg 2010
The story of SDYCORE LAB part 1
SDYCORE LAB in beta
A really simple GCM part 1: A physicist meets modern Earth System Models
Last spring, when I returned to work after my paternity leave, I felt frustrated that the GCM/ESM (CESM1) I’m using for my research is so damned complicated. It’s very hard to get any kind of feeling for how the massive model actually works. Of course I could spend forever reading the code and technical documentation, but the full complexity makes it difficult to grasp, and I would not have enough time to spend on actually doing my own research.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my model. It’s just that I’m a little bit uncomfortable with using models I don’t fully understand. I guess this is an aspect of a subtle cultural difference between meteorology and some other physical sciences [1]. Since I have about 6 years of training as a physicist I bring that cultural baggage with me into my climate science/meteorology work, and It’s making me uncomfortable with the “black-boxiness” of modern Earth System Models. In the physics fields I trained in you’re generalyy expected to build your own simulation code, and if you inherit some code you’re usually inheriting it from the person who built it and you’re expected to fully understand everything before using it. Needless to say, that’s not how it works in modern meteorology.
Hva betyr det at klimamodellene ikke stemmer med observasjonene?
From climate forecast to carbon budgets – Unfounded probabilities at the heart of climate science.
The stated goal of world climate policy is to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. This point is often, somewhat arbitrarily, defined as 2°C above preindustrial temperatures. In the context of the Paris agreement, the ambition is 1.5°C. No matter what the limit is, we need some way of knowing if we’re going to exceed the warming limit or not. The answer in the last years has been whats called cumulative carbon emission budgets or, often, just carbon budgets.