Scientists question computerised climate-change models

As world leaders gathered in New York for a high-level UN meeting on climate change, a new report by some of the world’s most renowned scientists urges policymakers to keep their eyes on the “science grapevine”, arguing that their understanding of global warming is still far from complete.

Recognising that powerful computer-based simulations are a key element in predicting climate change, a new Institute of Physics (IOP ) report, published on 26 September 2007, shows that leading climate-physicists’ views on the reliability of these models differ.
Entitled Climate change prediction: a robust or flawed process? , the report is based on a seminar held in June 2007 that debated the link between global warming and human activity. The aim was to discuss whether climate-change prediction models are sufficiently robust to influence government policies or whether such models are flawed and the planet is experiencing natural changes that humans are unable to influence.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ) Professor Richard S Lindzen believes that the “current climate models exaggerate the impact of CO2 on temperature because of a poor understanding and representation of the feedback effects due to clouds and water vapour”.

However, Professor Alan J Thorpe from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC ) said that “there is no reason a priori that model uncertainties should cause systematic overprediction of global average warming”.

EurActiv