Global climate models
Introduction A popular book on climate science published in 2021 pointed to the limitations of computer simulations of the Earth’s climate and suggested that the faster computers needed to give satisfactory results in reasonable run times would not be available for two or three decades. This post outlines some recent advances in climate modelling, preceded by notes on earlier work. Early simulations of climate Although climate models using computers existed in the 1950s, the period from 1970 to 2007 described by Hausfather et al. (2019) makes a useful introduction. The authors analysed the projections of change in global mean surface temperature (GMST) made by several generations of past models. Simple energy balance models were made in the early 1970s, based mainly on CO2 concentrations. They have been “gradually sidelined” in favour of general circulation models first published in the late 1980s. The two main factors which influence long-term performance are the accuracy of...