Modeling Climate Change
Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt (credit: Columbia Climate School)
The effects of climate change are observed on different scales from the micro, think phytoplankton in the oceans, to the macro, like global weather systems and everywhere in between.
So how do you accurately connect all these levels of complexity so they tell a complete and compelling story? That is the challenge of crafting climate models. NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt says you can't understand climate change piecemeal but only as a whole. As data becomes increasingly available from environmental, physical, and biological studies the climate change models, initially developed in the 1980's, become more exact in their predictions.
The importance of these predictive models is becoming clearer by the day as extreme weather events from major hurricanes to regional droughts increase in their intensity. The issue then becomes how best to utilize them to educate, adapt, or avoid the consequences of disasters? Schmidt explained this to a TED conference audience. WHB