9 - Constraining Climate

Summary

Climate modeling developed further at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. The laws of physics that form the foundation of weather and climate models imply strict conservation of properties like mass, momentum, and energy. A household budget analogy can be used to explain these conservation requirements, which are stricter for climate models as opposed to weather models. A mismatch in the energy transfer between atmospheric and oceanic models that were part of a climate model led to a correction technique developed in the 1980s known as flux adjustment, which violated energy conservation. Subsequent improvements in climate models obviated the need for these artificial flux adjustments. Now we have more complex models, known as Earth System Models, that include biological and chemical processes such as the carbon cycle. The concept of the constraining power of models is introduced.