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Exploring the Earth System: Why do we need complex climate models?
As climate change has an increasing impact on our lives, the importance of climate models has gradually gained greater attention. These numerical climate models help scientists understand climate dynamics and predict future climate change by simulating various drivers of the Earth system, such as the atmosphere, ocean, land surface and ice sheet.
Climate models use the basic laws of physics, fluid motion and chemistry to divide the Earth into three-dimensional grids and perform calculations on each grid, which allows us to assess the impact of climate change and explore the relationship between climate and... Interactions between ecosystems.
Climate models vary in complexity. From simple radiation heat transfer models to more complex coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice global climate models, these models each have their own scope of applicability and functionality. For example, a simple model might treat the Earth as a point and treat external radiation in an average manner, whereas a complex coupled model would take into account the interdependencies of various factors and solve a full set of equations for mass transfer, energy transfer, and radiation exchange.
These models calculate the energy imbalance that affects temperature changes based on shortwave electromagnetic radiation from the sun and longwave radiation from the earth. However, there are still doubts in the scientific community about the soundness and effectiveness of these models. The ease of use of simple models often leads to over-reliance on them, while failing to take into account key factors such as the water cycle.
Application of climate models
The development and application of climate models can be roughly divided into three types of institutions: national meteorological services, university-related research units and international research laboratories. These agencies use models to help study trends in climate change and provide climate predictions. For example, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the United States and the Max Planck Institute for Climate Research in Germany are playing a leading role in this regard.
The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) improves the accuracy and confidence of global climate projections through the evolution of climate models, allowing us to make more confident predictions about future climate change.
History and Development of Climate Models
Climate models have become more sophisticated as computing power has increased since the 1960s. The initial model focused mainly on a single energy balance calculation. As the research progressed, the impact of ocean, land and ice was gradually taken into account. These interim results have advanced our understanding of the climate system and laid a solid foundation for future climate predictions.
However, the operation of complex models undoubtedly increases energy consumption, which is also one of the current challenges. Cloud-based climate models require high-performance supercomputers to run, and the power demand behind them and their impact on the environment deserve our attention.
Challenges and opportunities for scientists
For scientists to effectively use climate models to make future predictions, they need to fully understand the limitations and uncertainties of these models. Even though large models perform well in data integration and current situation analysis, it is still necessary to emphasize the rational use of simplified models and critical analysis of their results. In addition, with the continuous advancement of science and technology, future climate models will have the potential to become more sophisticated and accurate.
What we need to ask is: in the face of the challenges of complex climate models, how can we better use these models to predict the future of climate in order to meet the challenges posed by environmental change?
