Open Source Climate Model?

[gettingchilly]

Now I know that most readers of this site view climate models with a great deal of skepticism/derision or worse. However, having read these forums for six months or so now, it's clear that there are some extremely bright people visiting here that often have their own slant on things and possibly some real truths.

If the IPCC can create their bogus computer models based on lies and half truths then I'm sure that we could come up with something better that's just honest, just look at Linux versus Vista. If we were to consider all known possible inputs (as of today of course because real science is about finding/embracing & solving new problems) then I'm sure we could come up with an interesting model of our own.

When I started coding it was punched cards & shading with a 2B pencil through to embedded design, lots of windows apps, a bit of linux, lots of C etc. etc. I'm sure that there are lots of people with something to offer from the coding to the suggested formula for planetary effects to the real CO2 effect and the solar effect.

Anyone interested in producing a climate model with no hidden black boxes or random corrections. An open source model could really put the cat amongst the pigeons as real people would be able to see the effects of changes both with and without imagined/proposed feedback systems.

What do you think, am I dreaming?

[jimg]

It sounds like a great idea.

Have you been to Steve MacIntyre's website?

www.climateaudit.org/

He's been analyzing reports that have been put out,
particularly Steig, et. al. regarding Antarctic warming.
He puts all his code (predemonitately coded in R) on the site.

There are several other people who post their studies on the site as well.

[socold]

Mar 30, 2009 20:34:39 GMT gettingchilly said:

Now I know that most readers of this site view climate models with a great deal of skepticism/derision or worse. However, having read these forums for six months or so now, it's clear that there are some extremely bright people visiting here that often have their own slant on things and possibly some real truths.

If the IPCC can create their bogus computer models based on lies and half truths then I'm sure that we could come up with something better that's just honest, just look at Linux versus Vista. If we were to consider all known possible inputs (as of today of course because real science is about finding/embracing & solving new problems) then I'm sure we could come up with an interesting model of our own.

When I started coding it was punched cards & shading with a 2B pencil through to embedded design, lots of windows apps, a bit of linux, lots of C etc. etc. I'm sure that there are lots of people with something to offer from the coding to the suggested formula for planetary effects to the real CO2 effect and the solar effect.

Anyone interested in producing a climate model with no hidden black boxes or random corrections. An open source model could really put the cat amongst the pigeons as real people would be able to see the effects of changes both with and without imagined/proposed feedback systems.

What do you think, am I dreaming?

Well apart from some major disagreements* I would be up for that as long as the approach was realisitic. Ie it's unlikely we will be able to produce a fully fledged GCM. It's not the coding that's the problem, it's the atmospheric physics, it's complicated (books.google.co.uk/books?id=PrU8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=%22black+body%22+atmosphere&source=bl&ots=KdxRjtiAGY&sig=p_WR1AejFchtaPvqIAJaBmUMOF8&hl=en&ei=Ge3MScGQFNerjAfezcHZCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA9,M1)

But a very simple model is probably achievable, perhaps even starting off by trying to model the temperature variations of the moon.

*
1) The IPCC don't make climate models
2) Climate models are already made by several groups from different countries, including "amateur" ones like on EdGCM and ClimatePrediction.net
3) Source code for some models is fully available.
4) It's unfeasible that noone has tried to do it properly. Unfeasible hat everyone who has tried it has commited fraud.

[icefisher]

Mar 31, 2009 19:42:19 GMT socold said:

Mar 30, 2009 20:34:39 GMT gettingchilly said:

4) It's unfeasible that noone has tried to do it properly. Unfeasible hat everyone who has tried it has commited fraud.

You are obviously oblivious to how many Wall Street derivative valuation models are out there.

[steve]

There are many open source models. I understand that CCSM is one of the easier ones to use:

www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/#src

Some of the ones in the following link are protected, but the code for 4.5 is accessible. This version was one of the more successful ones in the 2nd IPCC report, and is also the basis for the climateprediction.net experiment.

ncas-cms.nerc.ac.uk/content/view/49/172/

I've often suggested that if Exxon and other energy companies could have put money into climate modelling rather than PR and lobbying if they really believed what their mouthpieces were spouting. I don't think it would cost them much to do a proper modelling study to see if, for example, the models could be made to simulate Lindzen's Iris hypothesis while also being consistent with the physics and observations.

[nautonnier]

Apr 1, 2009 11:59:34 GMT steve said:

There are many open source models. I understand that CCSM is one of the easier ones to use:

www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/#src

Some of the ones in the following link are protected, but the code for 4.5 is accessible. This version was one of the more successful ones in the 2nd IPCC report, and is also the basis for the climateprediction.net experiment.

ncas-cms.nerc.ac.uk/content/view/49/172/

I've often suggested that if Exxon and other energy companies could have put money into climate modelling rather than PR and lobbying if they really believed what their mouthpieces were spouting. I don't think it would cost them much to do a proper modelling study to see if, for example, the models could be made to simulate Lindzen's Iris hypothesis while also being consistent with the physics and observations.

And if they _did_ put their money into that research - unless it met the biases of the people reading the results the response would be "you are in the pay of 'big oil'!"

Regardless of correctness of the science - perception trumps it every time. Unfortunately, this is true even among trained scientists.

[steve]

Apr 1, 2009 12:03:40 GMT nautonnier said:

And if they _did_ put their money into that research - unless it met the biases of the people reading the results the response would be "you are in the pay of 'big oil'!"

The suggestion that it is better to pay a lobbyist than to try to prove your point with valid science is very negative (but not surprising).

[woodstove]

Apr 1, 2009 13:38:50 GMT steve said:

Apr 1, 2009 12:03:40 GMT nautonnier said:

And if they _did_ put their money into that research - unless it met the biases of the people reading the results the response would be "you are in the pay of 'big oil'!"

The suggestion that it is better to pay a lobbyist than to try to prove your point with valid science is very negative (but not surprising).

Steve:

1. Nautonnier's post does not suggest what you say it does.
2. You seem to be drifting toward ad-hominem attacks of late. Is this because the ground beneath your feet is eroding? Just askin'

[nautonnier]

Apr 1, 2009 13:38:50 GMT steve said:

Apr 1, 2009 12:03:40 GMT nautonnier said:

And if they _did_ put their money into that research - unless it met the biases of the people reading the results the response would be "you are in the pay of 'big oil'!"

The suggestion that it is better to pay a lobbyist than to try to prove your point with valid science is very negative (but not surprising).

I think you miss the point - ANY research funded by 'big oil' regardless of its bona fides will be discarded as flawed due to its funding provenance. So where those opponents of 'fossil fuels' appear free to get funding from any source, it is counter productive for someone to do research supporting fossil fuels/against AGW as it will not be published or even if it is, it will be immediately discounted.
I can assure you that working in university research funding areas it is _impossible_ to get funding if the outcome could falsify the AGW hypothesis.

[steve]

Apr 1, 2009 13:59:56 GMT woodstove said:

Apr 1, 2009 13:38:50 GMT steve said:

The suggestion that it is better to pay a lobbyist than to try to prove your point with valid science is very negative (but not surprising).

Steve:

1. Nautonnier's post does not suggest what you say it does.
2. You seem to be drifting toward ad-hominem attacks of late. Is this because the ground beneath your feet is eroding? Just askin'

That's not ad hominem.

It is essentially a negative point to say that someone is right not to bother doing the science because noone will believe them anyway, and misunderstands the fact that many of the people who are criticised for taking oil money are criticised because they say obviously false or misleading things.

[woodstove]

Apr 1, 2009 17:08:32 GMT steve said:

Apr 1, 2009 13:59:56 GMT woodstove said:

Steve:

1. Nautonnier's post does not suggest what you say it does.
2. You seem to be drifting toward ad-hominem attacks of late. Is this because the ground beneath your feet is eroding? Just askin'

That's not ad hominem.

It is essentially a negative point to say that someone is right not to bother doing the science because noone will believe them anyway, and misunderstands the fact that many of the people who are criticised for taking oil money are criticised because they say obviously false or misleading things.

Nauti did not say "someone is right not to bother doing the science" or anything of the kind, no matter how many times you assert that he did.

And the latter part of your assertion above is more ad hominem. Perhaps you could:

1. Quote people or represent their ideas accurately
2. Not make sweeping ad hominem attacks
3. Give a list of the "obviously false or misleading things" that those who question AGW have said with citations

[gettingchilly]

"There are many open source models. I understand that CCSM is one of the easier ones to use: www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/ccsm3.0/#src "

I just had a good read through this and it is along the lines of what I had in mind except that it excludes solar influences, and uses data from the us Department of energy which if you follow the link you get to what they are about.

"the research is focused on understanding the physical, chemical, and biological processes affecting the Earth’s atmosphere, land, and oceans and how these processes may be affected, either directly or indirectly, by energy production and use, primarily the emission of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion.

So a community model using data from sources whose intentions are to closely bound to the AGW agenda is of no real value. You need a model that can take any data from any source with no prerequisites.

I was really thinking of a model that basically starts with the sun and it's orbit variation, it's output variations due to these effects with the option to hook in the barycentric effects, the cosmic ray effects, atmospheric height etc and then apply everything else provided by the CCSM on top of this rather than the other way around.

The processing power required may be huge but I remember a couple of years ago there was a climate change experiment run by the BBC using the same distributed processing platform as used by SETI to run the model on many thousands of computers. I actually subscribed to the BBC program before I really new anything about climate science (still not one of the most savvy here but learning fast) because I thought I could help "fight climate change" I feel a bit cheated now for wasting my computer resources as the result of the experiment was of course "It's worse than we thought, we only have 30 seconds to save the world"

So the real problem as I see it is that virtually all modelers pretty much ignore the solar influence and reduce it to TSI..

[socold]

Apr 1, 2009 20:01:00 GMT gettingchilly said:

I was really thinking of a model that basically starts with the sun and it's orbit variation, it's output variations due to these effects with the option to hook in the barycentric effects, the cosmic ray effects, atmospheric height etc and then apply everything else provided by the CCSM on top of this rather than the other way around.

Perhaps start with an even simpler case and build up. The simplest case is a non-rotating planet with no atmosphere, no ocean, no variation in ground type, that is a fixed distance from it's star. Implementing that requires getting the gridding working, the timesteps working and a bit of physics in. That's enough work to be no small task.

These are the steps I see:

1) Split the planet surface into a NxM grid based on longitude and latitude.

2) Implement a time step system - GCMs usually have increments of about half an hour for a time step I think.

Then a model run will work by setting the initial state and increment the time by the timestep. For each timestep:

3) Calculate how much energy each grid cell absorbs from the Sun over the current timestep. Unfortunately this requires a bit of geometry work.

3a) Calculate how much solar energy reaches the planet given it's orbital radius and the output of the star.

3b) Calculate the area of each grid cell - at higher latitudes the cells have smaller area.

3c) Calculate the inclination of the grid cell towards the sun (with enough grid cells this can be approximated ok as a plane) to calculate how much incident sunlight is on that grid cell.

3d) Calculate how what proportion of the incident sunlight is absorbed rather than reflected.

4) Calculate how much energy the grid cell loses during the timestep. Because this is a planet with no atmosphere, the grid cell can only lose energy through radiation (or am I wrong? Is horizontal transfer of energy between grid cells negliable enough to ignore?). Assuming it is negliable to ignore, the energy loss by the gridcell over the current time step is a function of it's temperature according to the stefan-boltzmann law (and factoring in the length of the timestep).

4) Calculate the net energy change over timestep. Ie deduct the energy absorbed from the energy emitted.

5) From the energy change calculate the change in temperature over the timestep and update the grids temperature ready for the next timestep. I have little idea of this aspect, I guess given an X increase in energy you can calculate the change in temperature based on the specific heat of the surface material or something.

This very simple model should over many timesteps see the planet reaching an equillibrium state.

You could then mess about changing the output of the star over time, just to play about with it. The model should already facilitate you simply increasing a solar energy output variable and everything else will just fall into place carried by the physics.

The next step I guess is to add rotation. This raises some complications, for example the grid cells will move during the half hour timesteps if the planet is rotating. The movement might flaw the model unless it's factored in.

There's also a question of why do planets rotate, can anything in the model so far affect the rotational speed of the planet? Should that be factored in, etc. I don't know. Everytime something new is added from here the questions accumulate.

[gettingchilly]

Socold/Glc are you the same girl/boy?


I think we already have models that ignore the real world, they are from the IPCC (Ignore, People, Climate, Consequences)

We can of course just ignore the sun, the clouds, the cosmic rays , blah.blah.

You have a very unusual use of the English language which using my (Cunningly Unnerving Nuance Testing) language Model ( Yessa I do Hava This in the addittion to my cattlain de model of curse) tells me that you are clearly not English or that you recently gota D A from you local colledge in Lambeth

[socold]

All I am suggesting is that a climate model can be built up incrementally. By all means put cocean and atmosphere in eventually, but it seems to me you don't want to throw that in as a first step.