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The Myopia of Imperfect Climate Models: The Case of UKCP09

Frigg, Roman and Smith, Leonard A. and Stainforth, David A. (2013) The Myopia of Imperfect Climate Models: The Case of UKCP09. Philosophy of Science, 80 (5). pp. 886-897.

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Abstract

The United Kingdom Climate Impacts Program’s UKCP09 project makes high-resolution forecasts of climate during the 21st century using state of the art global climate models. The aim of this paper is to introduce and analyze the methodology used and then urge some caution. Given the acknowledged systematic errors in all current climate models, treating model outputs as decision relevant probabilistic forecasts can be seriously misleading. This casts doubt on our ability, today, to make trustworthy, high-resolution predictions out to the end of this century.


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Item Type: Published Article or Volume
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Frigg, Romanr.p.frigg@lse.ac.uk
Smith, Leonard A.lenny@maths.ox.ac.uk
Stainforth, David A.d.a.stainforth@lse.ac.uk
Keywords: Climate change models
Subjects: General Issues > Models and Idealization
Depositing User: Roman Frigg
Date Deposited: 16 Dec 2014 19:32
Last Modified: 16 Dec 2014 19:32
Item ID: 11202
Journal or Publication Title: Philosophy of Science
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Official URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/673892
Subjects: General Issues > Models and Idealization
Date: December 2013
Page Range: pp. 886-897
Volume: 80
Number: 5
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/11202

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