Weather Models, Climate Models, Observations, and Parallel Earths
Saturday, May 23
10 AM PDT
By Dr. Keith E. Grant
Weather models and climate models share some core algorithms. They also
share algorithms with the models used to obtain properties of the
atmosphere and surface from satellite observations. There are
differences also, largely a reflection of different spans of time. All
three depend on local observations but in different ways.
Satellite observations can be effectively instantaneous, many acquired
within a single day. Climate model runs span years, requiring inclusion
of seasonal changes and feedbacks of surface and ocean. Weather models
are only able to predict the weather up to about two-weeks into the
future before the actual weather and the model weather diverge. This
does not mean that the weather the model creates is unrealistic. A
person on a parallel Earth with the model’s weather wouldn’t be able to
tell from the weather alone that they weren’t on our Earth. That’s a
bridge between weather modeling and climate modeling.
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