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How do we know that climate change is an emergency? How did the scientific community reach this conclusion all but unanimously, and what tools did they use to do it? This book tells the story of climate models, tracing their history from nineteenth-century calculations on the effects of greenhouse gases, to modern Earth system models that integrate the atmosphere, the oceans, and the land using the full resources of today's most powerful supercomputers. Drawing on the author's extensive visits to the world's top climate research labs, this accessible, non-technical book shows how computer models help to build a more complete picture of Earth's climate system. Computing the Climate is ideal for anyone who has wondered where the projections of future climate change come from – and why we should believe them.
1. Introduction
2. The world's first climate model
3. The forecast factory
4. Taming chaos
5. The heart of the machine
6. The well-equipped physics lab
7. Plug and play
8. Sound science
9. Choosing a future
References
Index
Steve M. Easterbrook is the Director of the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, where he teaches courses on environmental decision-making, systems thinking, and climate literacy. He received a PhD in Computing from Imperial College London in 1991. In the 1990s he served as lead scientist at NASA's Katherine Johnson IV&V Facility in West Virginia, where he worked on software verification for the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. He has been a consultant for the European and Canadian Space Agencies, and a visiting scientist at many climate research labs in the US and Europe.
"Numerical climate models are a critical tool for assessing the threat posed by climate change and investigating the options available to mitigate that threat. Yet, an understanding of these models – how they work, what they tell us, and how their tested and validated – has remained evasive for all but the most math and physics-literate. In Computing the Climate, computer scientist Steve Easterbook takes us on a journey through the world of climate modeling, making the science accessible to lay readers, and showing us why we should trust the models and heed their warnings, before it's too late."
– Michael Mann, University of Pennsylvania, author of The New Climate War
"Computing the Climate provides an impressively detailed history of how climate models evolved from simple equations calculated by hand to giant programs running on supercomputers. Avoiding jargon, this book explains to a general audience how the laws of physics and the principles of software engineering are combined to build climate models."
– R. Saravanan, Texas A&M University, author of The Climate Demon
"Computing the Climate takes a unique look at the history of computational modeling the Earth's climate system, the processes represented in these models, their evaluation, and how they are being used to project the potential changes in the future of our climate. When combined with more detailed analyses of concurrent issues being addressed in these models such as cloud and convection processes, this would be an excellent book for a university course on climate modeling."
– Don Wuebbles, University of Illinois
"I teach several courses in climate change and climate modeling for general and specialized audiences, and I am so excited to incorporate this new text by Easterbrook into those classes. While climate models are derived from first physical principles, climate models are developed by people and communities. I think that this book's approach of the tracing of revolutionary ideas and herculean efforts by generations of scientists to develop deep understanding and predictive capability for weather and climate does the topic justice. The logical progression of concepts, chapter by chapter is excellent as is the extensive, but not obtrusive, referencing throughout. Many difficult concepts, including: the greenhouse effect, chaos and predicability, computational instability, parallel computing, the difference between predictions and projections, are explained very well and accessibly. This book will be compelling reading both for students and people who simply want to know more."
– Matthew Huber, Purdue University
"Easterbrook's non-technical survey of climate modeling uniquely expands the climate change genre. Students will benefit from its broad scope and equation-free conceptual explanations, and climate modelers will appreciate its historical approach linking nineteenth century experiments and ideas to twenty-first century breakthroughs."
– Baylor Fox-Kemper, Brown University
"This is a very readable personal account of climate model development throughout history. It focuses on several individuals and modeling groups/countries. It often refers to 'you' and 'we'. I learned a lot and enjoyed the book, and I recommend it to anyone faced with making decisions involving the future climate."
– Kevin Trenberth, University of Auckland, author of The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System
"This engaging, beautifully written book brings alive the scientists who created climate models, how they did it, and what the models can (and cannot) tell us – all in straightforward, nontechnical language and enlightening illustrations. If you want to understand how modern climate science works, start here."
– Paul N. Edwards, Stanford University, author of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming
