SUMMARY

This presentation explores by example the question of weather forecasting's role in developing accurate climate models.

This presentation presents:

• Three reasons
•  Methodology
•  Four examples
•  Final Remarks

GOALS

To demonstrate the following:

• Evaluate the simulation of moist processes against field observations taken on a particular day and location
• Evaluate the nature of moist processes parameterization errors before longertime scale feedbacks develop
• Assess how soon climate biases develop 

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION AND TEACHING MATERIALS

View PowerPoint Presentation>>  "What can climate modelers learn from a weather forecasting approach about errors in the parameterization of atmospheric moist processes?"

TEACHING NOTES / CONTEXT FOR USE

• The technique of weather forecasting is helpful to climate modelers for several reasons but I don’t want to oversell it.
• As is true of many diagnostic studies, it almost never tells you how to fix something
• It does tell something about how errors develop, rules out some potential causes, and facilitates the use of specialized field campaign data
• Generally the differences between model simulations and observations are greater than the problems caused by adjustment to analysis from a foreignmodel – thus “model differences” are“model errors”
• The continuing improvement of analysis data facilitates this work

ASSESSMENT

Assessment is at the descretion of the educator in how this presentation is applied.

REFERENCES AND RESOURCES