EdGCM - Climate Modeling Made Easy(er)
Modeling a system means creating a simulation that can be used to learn about the real system. Scientists and mathematicians have been doing this for a long time, but in recent years computers have made it possible to model very complex systems like the earth's climate.
Starting in the late 1980s scientists using computerized climate models warned that burning fossil fuels was resulting in increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that this could lead to increased global temperatures with potentially widespread negative effects (actually, this was first suggested in the 1890s, but that's another story). Thus global warming entered the public consciousness. Since then, the evidence to support the theory that human activity is warmng the earth's climate has become overwhelming, and the models used to predict future states of the climate have become more sophisticated.
But, remarkably, the very model that led to the initial scientific paper warning of global warming is available for you to try for yourself. Columbia University, working with NASA, has taken a much refined version of the model and added a friendly user interface that allows anyone with a little determination to run climate experiments of his or her own.
The EdGCM web site was designed as an educational resource, and you'll find everything you need to know to get started with your own climate models on the site. You can also download the software there as well: http://edgcm.columbia.edu/
But even with the considerable work done to make the model easy to use, it still requires a number of steps to run a climate simulation and analyze the resulting data. So we've created three narrated tutorials to help you get started.
EdGCM - An introduction to climate Modeling
EdGCM - Running a simulation and analyzing your data
Using EVA to Visualize Climate Simulation Data
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