Evaluating climate emulation: fundamental impulse testing of simple climate models

Testing and evaluating atmospheric climate models

Any model must be tested to assess the quality of its results and to give guidance on the level of confidence to ascribe to those results. We also must be able to compare alternative formulations of model components and judge whether changes really reduce model error. In this article, we describe the special nature of climate model validation. In general, climate models consist of different mod...

Testing the Historic Tracking of Climate Models

Evaluating integrated assessment models of global climate change

Integrated Assessment Models of global climate change (IAMs) are an established tool to study interlinkages between the human and the natural system. Insights from these complex models are widely used to advise policy-makers and to inform the general public. But up to now there has been little understanding of how these models can be evaluated and community-wide standards are missing. To answer...

Fundamentals of Ocean Climate Models Fundamentals of Ocean Climate Models

Abrupt change in climate and climate models

First, we review the evidence that abrupt climate changes have occurred in the past and then demonstrate that climate models have developing capacity to simulate many of these changes. In particular, the processes by which changes in the ocean circulation drive abrupt changes appear to be captured by climate models to a degree that is encouraging. The evidence that past changes in the ocean hav...