Climate Literacy & Climate Change Content For Spherical Displays Frank Niepold NOAA Climate Program Office Silver Spring, MD USA NOAA SCIENCE ON A SPHERE USERS COLLABORATIVE NETWORK 2008 Hilo, Hawaii 31 July 2008 Keith W. Dixon NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab Princeton, NJ USA Climate Models as Virtual Time Machines 1850 … … … … …

Lacking a Time Machine, Climate Models provide the most credible, science-based means to quantitatively project how the planet’s climate will respond to changes in greenhouse gases & other climate “forcing agents”. Land physics and hydrology Ocean ecology and biogeochemistry Atmospheric GCM Tracer transport and chemistry Land ecology and biogeochemistry Ocean GCM Sea ice model A Global Climate Model is a mathematical representation of the major climate system components and their interactions. The model equations operate on a grid and are solved on a computer.

Model grids At GFDL, our “workhorse” models have more than 300,000 atmospheric grid cells and a couple million ocean grid cells. And there’s thousands more grid cells for the land and sea ice model components. Finer grid resolution (smaller 3-D grid cells) is desired by scientists and stakeholders, but is limited by computer resources.

Model grids This cube has 27 “grid cells” Imagine about 100,000 of these combined to form a globe…that’s the scale of current workhorse global climate model. Now image > 2½ million of these combined … that’s the number of grid points in a GFDL global climate model we’re testing. (~78 million pts) Our “next generation model”?

Observational records can tell us about the past and the present… This week we’ve seen numerous examples of observational info wonderfully communicated using spherical displays. …state-of-the-art climate models can provide info by simulating the past, present, & future. We learn & gain confidence from their ability to simulate observed large-scale, decade to decade variations. Used to project future “If…Then” scenarios.

Some of what climate models offer: Can simulate potential future conditions and the past quantitatively. Can simulate linkages between the different Global Climate System components (air, ocean, land, sea ice, biogeochemistry) Can isolate individual factors (role of natural vs. human-induced climate forcing factors). Can provide insight into whether short term “wiggles” or trends are climate signals or just random noise. Climate models as powerful yet imperfect tools that allow us to ask “What if…” “What if…” science questions.

SEA ICE NOAA/GFDL CLIMATE MODEL PRODUCTS

SURFACE AIR TEMPERATURE NOAA/GFDL CLIMATE MODEL PRODUCTS

Schematic of 3-D Ocean Circulation After Gnanadesikan & Hallberg, 2002

Simulated Ocean Heat Content Changes

Progress in Climate Science Occurs via a Synthesis of Observations, Theory, & Numerical Modeling Since the 1970s, many of the major advancements in climate science have come about as improved observations, refinements to theory, and the results of computer modeling have revealed a consistent story. OBSERVATIONS THEORY MODELING One of the Climate Literacy Principles:

Revolutionizing Earth System Science Education for the 21st Century Report, 2007 (page 34) Atmosphere, Weather and Climate Education in the U.S.

 …a continuum of competency Literacy Progression Target Audiences Uninterested and/or unaware Climate science interested Climate science attentive Climate science engaged CLIMATE LITERACY INFORMED DECISION MAKING KNOWLEDGE AWARENESS Climate Literacy is… Long-term, the vision expects a society capable of informed decision-making

K-2

Current Federal Partners. Current NOAA, EPA, NSF and US Forest Service Current National Partners. UCAR, NCAR, CIRES, AMS, TERC, GLOBE program, College of Exploration, ESIP federation, ASTC IGLO, LHS, AAAS Project 2061, NAAEE

Observations, experiments, and theory used to construct and refine computer models and develop scientific explanations lead to better understanding of the linkages between the atmosphere-ocean system and how it relates to the overall climate system’s behavior. As a result, more reliable projections of future climate changes will develop over time.

The consensus of scientific opinion is that the natural processes driving long-term climate changes cannot entirely explain the rapid changes observed in recent decades, nor do they solely predict those projected for coming decades.

The preponderance of scientific evidence indicates that the observed increase in global average temperatures since the latter part of the 20th century is very likely due to documented increases in human-induced greenhouse gas concentrations, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. 3 ( 3 Based on IPCC 2007: The Physical Science basis: Contribution of Working Group I)

Fundamental characteristics of the climate system have been researched and are understood well enough to make reasonably accurate predictions about the climate system and, therefore, to support decision making, even though research continues into many aspects of climate change.

Climate Science Sources

Individual papers vs assessments