The world of climate modeling is complex, requiring an enormous amount of coordination and collaboration to produce. Models feed on mountains of different inputs to run simulations of what a future world might look like, and can be so big — in some cases, lines of code in the millions — they take days or weeks to run. Building these models can be challenging, but getting them right is critical for us to see where climate change is taking us, and importantly, what we might do about it.
The models are a powerful tool, but they are only as good as the parameters and assumptions they are built on. Those need to be scrutinized and validated by scientists—and that’s where Lettie Roach, a postdoctoral researcher in Atmospheric Sciences at UW, and her collaborators come in. Their recent publication in Geophysical Research Letters evaluates 40 recent climate models focusing on sea ice, the relatively thin layer of ice that forms on the surface of the ocean, around Antarctica, and was coordinated and produced to inform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“I am really fascinated by Antarctic sea ice, which the models have struggled more with than Arctic sea ice,” says Roach. “Not as many people are living near the Antarctic and there haven’t been as many measurements made in the Antarctic, making it hard to understand the recent changes in sea ice that we’ve observed through satellites.”
Read more at University Of Washington
Image: Researcher venture out on the sea ice. CREDIT: LETTIE ROACH