What is Climate Model?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_model#/media/File:Global_Climate_Model.png

Advantage: global coverage

Disadvantage: modeling cells are from 300 – 500 km, downscaling for local (at the level of cities, counties, states) decision making and application is difficult; results can be very uncertain.

Lawrence Livermore National Lab

https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/about.html

The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) collects output from global coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models (coupled GCMs). Among other uses, such models are employed both to detect anthropogenic effects in the climate record of the past century and to project future climatic changes due to human production of greenhouse gases and aerosols.

More on models:

Climate Modeling 101 (link to download video):

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/cm101-grid-resolution/

Climate Models:

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/climate-modeling/

Simple Climate Model (interactive): https://scied.ucar.edu/interactive/simple-climate-model

Climate Models: https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/primer/climate-models

Are Models Designed to Predict Future?

An example from our current problem: coronavirus

Two Coasts. One Virus. How New York Suffered Nearly 10 Times the Number of Deaths as California.

“In an interview, Marc Lipsitch (Harvard professor of epidemiology and the director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, creator of one of the first COVID-19 models) emphasized that models are meant to be but one source of helpful information to guide policy makers. They don’t predict the future, and using them to do so is misguided. “For any decision-maker to say they relied exclusively on models to make decisions about what to do and when and how,” he said, “is an abdication of responsibility.””

Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature