Climatologists figuring out which data makes their models better

[n2doc]

By Kyle Niemeyer | Published about an hour ago

In order to improve long-term predictions of global climate change, we need more information about the current and changing environment. Unfortunately, in the current era of government budget problems, expensive satellite climate studies are being cut, so it is important to identify the measurements we need the most, choosing among things like air temperature, pressure, humidity, radiance at various wavelengths, radiation transfer to and from the surface, etc.

One possible way of prioritizing is to figure out which of those measures would help us the most when it comes to projecting future climate change, and focus research funds there. A paper that recently appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science presents a statistical method for doing this and shows that surface temperature measurements may not be the most useful data to improve surface temperature predictions.

By including more data into climate models, the accuracy and precision of long-term predictions can be improved. In fact, any additional data could improve the predictions, but with limited resources, emphasis should be placed on obtaining the most useful data.

For the new paper, researchers started with a set of models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) Fourth Assessment Report, and used a statistical method known as Bayesian inference to determine the improvements in accuracy and precision that resulted from including additional data when modeling one particular emissions scenario, the IPCC's A1B. This scenario gives a best estimate for temperature rise of 2.8°C, but has a likely range of 1.7-4.4°C—it's obvious that additional data to refine this range would be useful.
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http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/06/climatologists-figuring-out-which-data-makes-their-models-better.ars

Of course, we always have money for more wars, and tax cuts...

[Chemisse]

1. I think this will prove to have been the single most important issue of our time.

Maybe even the most important issue in the history of the human race. And this is how we addressed it: penny pinching and politicizing.

[truebrit71]

2. Yup. We are heading for catastrophe and all we can do is bury our heads in the sand..

..and argue about how much the studies will cost..

All our future generations will do as they look down upon us from Mars is scratch their heads wondering how we could have missed such obvious signs...

[pscot]

3. It's not ALL we can do

But it is what we do best.

[truebrit71]

4. I know it's not all we can do...

...but it's all we can do with the current crop of politicians in charge and the corporate stranglehold such as it is...

We CAN do more...but we need alot of help pushing that rock up that hill...