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An introduction to the complex world of climate models that explains why we should trust their predictions despite the uncertainties.
List of contents
List of figures; Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. The Past: 1. Deducing weather: The dawn of computing; 2. Predicting weather: The butterfly and the tornado; 3. The greenhouse effect: Goldilocks and the three planets; 4. Deducing climate: Smagorinsky's laboratory; 5. Predicting climate: Butterflies in the greenhouse; 6. The ozone hole: Black swan at the polar dawn; 7. Global warming: From gown to town. Part II: The Present: 8. Occam's razor: The reduction to simplicity; 9. Constraining climate: A conservative view of modeling; 10. Tuning climate: A comedy of compensating errors; 11. Occam's beard: The emergence of complexity; 12. The Hansen paradox: The red Queen's race of climate modeling; 13. The Rumsfeld matrix: Degrees of knowledge; 14. Lost in translation; 15. Taking climate models seriously, not literally. Part III. The Future: 16. Moore's law: To exascale and beyond; 17. Machine learning: The climate imitation game; 18. Geoengineering: Reducing the fever; 19. Pascal's wager: Hedging our climate bets; 20. Moonwalking into the future. Epilogue. Glossary. Selected Bibliography. References. Index. Endnotes.
About the author
R. Saravanan is Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. He is a climate scientist with a background in physics and fluid dynamics and has been a lead researcher using computer models of the climate for over thirty years. He built an open-source simplified climate model from scratch, and has worked on complex models run on the world's most powerful supercomputers. He has worked with scientists at multiple climate modeling centers: the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton; the UK Universities Global Atmospheric Modelling Programme (UGAMP) in Cambridge; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Saravanan has served on national and international committees on climate science, including the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on the Assessment of Intraseasonal to Interannual Climate Prediction and Predictability, and the Science Steering Committee of the Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Atlantic (PIRATA). He recently helped create the TED-Ed animated short, 'Is the weather actually becoming more extreme?'.
Summary
Climate predictions - and the computer models behind them - play a key role in shaping public opinion on climate change. Providing an accessible introduction to the history, science, and philosophy of climate modeling, it is for anyone with an interest in climate change and a basic knowledge of science.
Additional text
'R. Saravanan is probably the most knowledgeable person in the world to write this book. This is a book that is accessible to the average college graduate and even many with less formal education. The pace of the reading is smooth, with many metaphors and analogies taken from a wide variety of sources … all whimsical but hitting his points perfectly. Readers will enjoy these features. This is a first rate, well-researched summary and analysis of how predictions in climate science work hand-in-hand with high-tech empirical data and detailed climate simulation models along with their enabler: the modern supercomputer.' Gerald R. North, Texas A&M University
