![]() ![]() Caltech geoscientists and chemists team up with researchers who develop Earth-observing missions at JPL. That effort has intensified with the establishment of Caltech's Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science. What does Caltech contribute to climate models?įor decades, Caltech scientists have characterized the atmospheres of planets and built our understanding of the physics and chemistry of clouds, air pollution, and airborne dust. Now, researchers aim for the same level of success in projections of the future climate. The use of data to improve computer models of weather forecasts over the last 50 years is a success story in science. They ask, for the planet and individual regions, how will average conditions change? How much rain or snow is expected to fall in a future year? How will high and low temperatures and the presence of clouds differ from what we are used to now? Where will the ocean's high tides reach? What kinds of extremes-hurricanes, monsoons, winter storms, floods, droughts, wildfires-should we be ready for? Weather forecasts project daily high and low temperatures, how much rain or snow may fall, and how fast the wind will blow in a specific place and time.Ĭlimate models look at the bigger picture. ![]() The physics of climate modeling is similar to weather forecasting, but the questions are different. Weather forecasts have a time horizon of about 10 days, while climate models are made to predict what will happen 10 years or even 100 years from now. How do weather forecasts differ from climate predictions? Jaruga is a Caltech research scientist focused on clouds. Stuart is Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences. He is also a senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which Caltech manages on behalf of NASA. Wu Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering. Schneider and Stuart are co-founders of the Climate Modeling Alliance ( CliMA). In the video below, Caltech's Tapio Schneider, Andrew Stuart, and Anna Jaruga talk about why increased precision is an urgent goal for climate models. Some of their specific predictions differ, primarily because each model includes different ways to model uncertain factors such as clouds. They also agree that weather patterns will change. Models agree that the climate is changing because of human activity and that the average global temperature and the sea level will continue to rise. ![]() They are driven by data and future scenarios about humanity's output of carbon dioxide and of pollutants that affect the climate. Models also integrate measurements of the sun's radiation and of Earth's atmosphere, seas, ice, volcanos, and land biosphere. ![]()
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