Climate models are complicated - and necessarily so if they are to recreate our complex world. But a new, simpler climate model aims to take some of the mystery out of the art of climate modelling.
Moaning about weather forecasts is almost an Australian national pastime. But weather predictions have improved a lot, and with a new satellite and supercomputer, they are about to get even more reliable.
Climate models have been criticised because observations could not find the predicted “hot spot” of strong warming in the troposphere. But analyses now show that the tropospheric hot spot is indeed real.
We’re no longer caught off guard when hurricanes make landfall, the way people were into the early 1900s. Better communications, measurements and observations all feed into better forecasts and more warning.
James Franklin, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Forecasting successes can breed complacency in the general public. But all hurricane damage isn’t necessarily contained within the “cone of uncertainty.”
In 1985, when CSIRO’s marine labs were launched, a seven-day weather forecast was little better than chance. Now, thanks to advances in our understanding of the oceans, our predictions are far better.
“Snowmageddon” was predicted – three feet of snow, blizzards whipped up by high winds, a freeze of the whole transport system. What New York got was “snowperbole”. Yes, it snowed, but not as badly as predicted…
The federal government’s new “Technical Advisory Forum” on weather data, announced by parliamentary environment secretary Bob Baldwin last week, will “review and provide advice on Australia’s official…
An article in The Australian today has once again raised the question of why scientists, in trying to estimate how the global and regional surface temperatures of Earth may have changed over the past century…