Climateprediction.net
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Introduction
Climateprediction.net is the largest experiment to try and produce forecasts of the climate in the 21st century.

Climate change, and our response to it, are issues of global importance, affecting food production, water resources, ecosystems, energy demand, insurance costs and much else.
There is a broad scientific consensus that the Earth will probably warm over the coming century; climateprediction.net should, for the first time, tell us what is most likely to happen.

Once you have downloaded a climate model it will run automatically as a background process on your computer whenever you switch your computer on.
As the model runs, you can watch the weather patterns on your, unique, version of the world evolve.The results are sent back to us via the internet, and you will be able to see a summary of your results on the climate prediction website.
Climateprediction.net uses the same underlying software, BOINC, as many other distributed computing projects.
For more details visit http://www.climateprediction.net/index.php

Contents

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Videos

BBC Documentary of Climateprediction.net

BBC Results Documentary

NOTE: We have made it easier to join Climateprediction.net by using GridRepublic. You can join through us as you may have done already.

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Science

The climate of the Earth is always changing. In the past it has altered as a result of natural causes. Nowadays, however, the term climate change is generally used when referring to changes in our climate which have been identified since the early part of the 1900's. The changes we've seen over recent years and those which are predicted over the next 80 years are thought to be mainly as a result of human behaviour rather than due to natural changes in the atmosphere.

Scientists across the World are looking at the evidence of climate change and are also using computer models to come up with predictions for our future environment and weather.

Temperature and rain, floods and storms, droughts and cold spells determine our life to a significant extent. We would like to know how we change the Earth's climate but we cannot carry out laboratory experiments for this purpose because the Earth's system is too complex to be simulated in a reactor. Governments and citizens ask climate scientists to estimate how the climate could be like in 50 or 100 years.

A climate model is a computer based version of the Earth system, which represents physical laws and chemical interactions in the best possible way. We include the sub-systems of the Earth system, which is gained from investigations in the laboratory and measurements in reality.

A global model is composed of data derived from the results of models simulating parts of the Earth system (like the carbon cycle or models of atmospheric chemistry) or, if possible with the available computer capacity, the models are directly coupled. The functionality of the models is tested by comparing simulations of the past climate with measured data we already have.

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Results

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Scientific Papers related to climateprediction.net

Myles Allen, Do it yourself climate prediction, Nature, 401, p.642, October 1999.

Myles Allen, Peter Stott, John Mitchell, Reiner Schnur & Thomas Delworth, Quantifying the uncertainty in forecasts of anthropogenic climate change, Nature, 407, pp.617-620, October 2000.

Reto Knutti, Thomas Stocker, Fortunat Joos & Gian-Kasper Plattner, Constraints on radiative forcing and future climate change from observations and climate model ensmbles, Nature 416, 18 April 2002.

Peter Stott & Jamie Kettleborough, Origins and estimates of uncertainty in predictions of twenty-first century temperature rise, Nature, 416, pp.719-723, 18 April 2002.

Myles Allen, William Ingram & David Stainforth, Constraints on future changes in climate and the hydrologic cycle, Nature Insight article, Nature, 419, pp.224-232, 12 September 2002.

Mat Collins, Dave Frame, Bablu Sinha & Chris Wilson, How far ahead could we predict El Nino? Geophysical Research Letters, 29, no. 10, 1492, 31 May 2002.

Mat Collins, Climate Predictability on Interannual to Decadal Time Scales: The Initial Value Problem, Climate Dynamics, 19, 8, pp. 671 - 692, 18 March 2002.

Mat Collins & Myles Allen, Assessing the relative roles of initial and boundary conditions in interannual to decadal climate predictability, Journal of Climate, 15, no 21, pp.3104-3109, November 2002.

Myles Allen, Jamie Kettleborough and David Stainforth, Model Error in Weather and Climate Forecasting, from the Proceedings of the 2002 ECMWF Predictability Seminar, European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting, Reading, UK, pp. 275-294

Myles Allen, Liability for climate change, Nature, 421, pp.891-892, February 2003.

Myles Allen, Possible or probable?, Nature, 425, p.242, September 2003. Click for climate change.pdf here for Portuguese translation of this article.

Jim Hansen, Myles Allen, David Stainforth, Andy Heaps and Peter Stott, Casino-21: Climate Simulation of the 21st Century, World Resource Review, 13, 2, pp.187-189, 2001.

Arno Scharl (Ed.), Environmental Online Communication, Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing Series, (c)2004 Springer London, ISBN: 1-85233-783-4, Chapter 12 "climateprediction.net: a global community for research in climate physics"

J.P.R.B Walton, D. Frame & D.A. Stainforth, Visualization For Public-Resource Climate Modelling, Data Visualization 2004 (O. Deussen, C. Hansen, D. Keim & D. Saupe, eds.) , pp.103-108, Eurographics Association, 2004.

James Murphy, David Sexton, David Barnett, Gareth Jones, Mark Webb, Matthew Collins & David Stainforth, Quantification of modelling uncertainties in a large ensemble of climate change simulations, Nature, 430, pp.768-772, August 2004.

Peter Stott, Daithi Stone & Myles Allen, Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003, Nature, 432, pp.610-614, December 2004.

Myles Allen & Richard Lord, The Blame Game - who will pay for the damaging consequences of climate change?, Nature, 432, pp.551-552, December 2004.

D. A. Stainforth, T. Aina, C. Christensen, M. Collins, N. Faull, D. J. Frame, J. A. Kettleborough, S. Knight, A. Martin, J. M. Murphy, C. Piani, D. Sexton, L. A. Smith, R. A. Spicer, A. J. Thorpe & M. R. Allen, Uncertainty in predictions of the climate response to rising levels of greenhouse gases, Nature, 433, pp.403-406, January 2005.

D. J. Frame, B. B. B. Booth, J. A. Kettleborough, D. A. Stainforth, J. M. Gregory, M. Collins, and M. R. Allen, Constraining climate forecasts: The role of prior assumptions, Geophysical Review Letters, 32, L09702, May 2005.

C. Piani, D. J. Frame, D. A. Stainforth, and M. R. Allen, Constraints on climate change from a multi-thousand member ensemble of simulations, Geophysical Review Letters, 32, L23825, December 2005.

G.C. Hegerl, T.J. Crowley, W.T. Hyde and D. J. Frame, Climate sensitivity constrained by temperature reconstructions over the past seven centuries, Nature, 440, p1029-1032, April 2006.

P. Pall, M.R. Allen, D.A. Stone, Testing the Clausius-Clapeyron constraint on changes in extrememprecipitation under CO2 warming. Climate Dynamics, 23:4, p. 351-363, August 2006.

M. Collins and S. Knight (Eds.), Ensembles and probabilities: a new era in the prediction of climate change, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, Print: 1364-503X, Online: 1471-2962, 2007.

H. J. Schellnhuber (Chief Ed.) W. Cramer, N. Nakicenovic, T. Wigley, G. youhe (Eds.) Avoiding dangerous climate change, Cambridge University Press. Please note chapters 29 (Observational constraints on climate change) and 33 (Risks associate with stabilisation scenarios and uncertainty in regional and global climate change impacts). PDF, 16MB.

C. Forest, M. Allen, A. Sokolov and P. Stone, Constraining climate model properties using optimal fingerprint detection methods, Climate Dynamics, 18, pp.277-295, DOI 10.1007/s003820100175.

C.G. Knight, S.H.E. Knight, N. Massey, T. Aina, C. Christensen, D.J. Frame, J.A. Kettleborough, A. Martin, S. Pascoe, B. Sanderson, D.A. Stainforth, M.R. Allen, Association of parameter, software and hardware variation with large scale behavior across 57,000 climate models, PNAS, July 2007.

D. Frame, N. Faull, M. Joshi and M. Allen, Probabilistic climate forecasts and inductive problems, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 2007 (published online).

M. Allen and D. Frame, Call Off the Quest, Science, October 2007.

B. Sanderson, R. Knutti, T. Aina, C. Christensen, N. Faull, D. Frame, W. Ingram, C. Piani, D. Stainforth, D. Stone and M. Allen, Constraints on Model Response to Greenhouse Gas Forcing and the Role of Subgrid-Scale Processes, Journal of Climate, June 2008.

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Design Papers related to climateprediction.net

D. Goodman, Introduction and Evaluation of Martlet, a Scientific Workflow Language for Abstracted Parallelisation, Proceedings of the Sixteenth International World Wide Web Conference, p983-982, May 2007.

D. Goodman, Martlet: a scientific work-flow language for abstracted parallisation, Proceedings of UK e-science All Hands meeting, Nottingham, UK, September 2006.

N. Massey, T. Aina, M. Allen, C. Christensen, D. Frame, D. Goodman, J. Kettleborough, A. Martin, S. Pascoe and D. Stainforth, Data access and analysis with distributed federated data servers in climateprediction.net , Advances in Geosciences, 8, p49-56, 2006.

Carl Christensen, Tolu Aina, David Stainforth, The Challenge of Volunteer Computing With Lengthy Climate Modelling Simulations, Proceedings of the 1st IEEE Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing, Melbourne, Australia, 5-8 Dec 2005

David Stainforth, Andrew Martin, Andrew Simpson, Carl Christensen, Jamie Kettleborough, Tolu Aina, and Myles Allen, Security Principles for Public-Resource Modeling Research, Proceedings of the 13th IEEE Conference on Enabling Grid Technologies (ENTGRID), Modena, Italy, June 2004

David Stainforth, Jamie Kettleborough, Andrew Martin, Andrew Simpson, Richard Gillis, Ali Akkas, Richard Gault, Mat Collins, David Gavaghan, & Myles Allen, Climateprediction.net: design principles for public resource modelling research, Proc. 14th IASTED conference on parallel and distributed computing systems, 2002.

David Stainforth, Jamie Kettleborough, Myles Allen, Matthew Collins, & Andy Heaps, Climateprediction.com: Distributed Computing for Public Interest Modelling Research. Computing in Science and Engineering, vol 4, no. 3, 2002.

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Public Presentations, Talks and Posters related to climateprediction.net

Myles Allen, Presentation to CosmoCaixa, Madrid, Spain, March 2003 (y en Español)

Dave Frame, Physics Today lecture to Oxford undergraduates, January, 2003.

Myles Allen, How can we (in)validate a probabilistic forecast?, Talk at the European Geophysical Society, Nice, April 2003.

Myles Allen, Will we ever be able to attribute individual weather events to anthropogenic climate change? , Santiago de Compostela, July, 2003.

Myles Allen, Probability and climate change, Department of Trade and Industry UK/Russia Climate Workshop, October, 2003. (In Russian.)

Extended abstract of a talk to be presented by Myles Allen to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Workshop on Uncertainty and Risk, Maynooth, Ireland, May 12-14th, 2004

Myles Allen, Making heavy weather, (Day After Tomorrow film review), Nature, 429, May 2004

Myles Allen, Changing climate, public presentation at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, July 2004.

Sylvia Knight, climateprediction.net - Progress so far..., NIWA (National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research), New Zealand, November 2004.

Sylvia Knight, Do-it-yourself climate prediction, video conference with 7 schools in New Zealand, November 2004.

Myles Allen, Human influence on weather risk: the 2003 European heat wave, COP10, Buenos Aires, December, 2004.

Sylvia Knight, Do-it-yourself climate prediction, talk to Slough Grammar School, December 2004.

Myles Allen, A novel view of global warming, Myles Allen reviews State of Fear by Michael Crichton, Nature, 433, January 2005

Sylvia Knight, climateprediction.net - help predict 21st century climate, talk to the Association for Science Education, January 2005

Dave Stainforth, Risks Associated with Stabilization Scenarios?, talk at Stabilisation 2005, the Met Office, Exeter, February 2005

Sylvia Knight, climateprediction.net - predicting 21st century climate, talk to the Geography Association, March 2005

Dave Frame, climateprediction.net, NIWA (National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research), New Zealand, March 2005.

Myles Allen, Is there a safe GHG stabilisation level? Results from climateprediction.net, Report to NERC council, Swindon, April 2005.

Jim Hansen, Grand Ensembles: Confidence, Uncertainty and Probability in Climate Change Forecasts, talk to Coal Technology Society of America, April 2005.

Sam Dean, Climate Change, Cafe Scientifique, Cuba, April 2005.

Neil Massey, Data Access and Analysis with Distributed, Federated Data Servers in climateprediction.net, presentation to the European Geophysical Union, April 2005.

Myles Allen, Probability in attributing and predicting climate change, British Council, Leipzig, April 2005.

Myles Allen, Model error in weather and climate forecasting, presentation to Reading University, May 2005.

Myles Allen, The Spectre of Liability, talk at the Climate Change Solutions meeting, Birmingham, May 2005.

Sylvia Knight, Attributing and predicting climate change, British Council, Bonn, August 2005.

Sylvia Knight, Climateprediction.net: Communicating climate prediction, Royal Meteorological Society, September 2005.

Dave Frame, Predicting and Attributing Climate Change, British Council, Warsaw, Poland, September 2005.

Myles Allen, Attribution of Climate Change: the Spectre of Liability, Presentation to Pretorial Meeting, October 2005.

Sylvia Knight, Predicting future climate change, Kazakh-British Technical University (Almaty, Kazakhstan), Almaty Energy Institute (Almaty, Kazakhstan), Agrarian University (Astana, Kazakhstan) and Eurasian University (Astana, Kazakhstan), October 2005.

Sylvia Knight, Climate change education and research in the U.K., Al Farabi National University (Almaty, Kazakhstan), October 2005.

Sylvia Knight, Attributing and Predicting climate change, Institute of Biophysics (Krasnoyarsk, Siberia), October 2005.

Sylvia Knight, Attributing and predicting future climate change, Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University (Siberia), October 2005.

Dave Frame, Climate Prediction and its Uncertainties, School of Geographical Science, Bristol , October 2005.

Dave Frame, Predicting Climate Change, OUCE (Oxford University Centre for the Environment) , Oxford, January 2006.

Sylvia Knight, Simulate the Climate of 1920-2080 on your home computer, (talk to students) Natural History Museum ,Stockholm, Sweden, March 2006.

Sylvia Knight, Climateprediction.net; predicting 21st century climate, (talk to teachers) Natural History Museum ,Stockholm, Sweden, March 2006.

Myles Allen, Puzzles arising from climateprediction.net , Newcastle, March 2006.

Dave Stainforth, Public Resource Distributed Modelling , Stockholm, Sweden, March 2006.

Daniel Goodman, Martlet: a scientific work-flow language for abstracted parallisation , All Hands meeting, Nottingham, 2006.

Milo Thurston, Presentation at the Dana Centre, London, January 2007.

Nick Faull and Milo Thurston, Precicting Climate Change Through Volunteer Computing, Oxford University Computing Services, February 2007.

Milo Thurston, Climateprediction.net Data Curation, Oxford University e-Research Centre's Digital Curation Centre meeting, February 2007.

Myles Allen, What can be said about 21st century climate?, June 2007.

Myles Allen, A North African perspective on Climate Change, October 2007.

Rachael McDonald, Climate Change in Libya 1957-2057, Nov 2007.

Helen Hanlon, Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events, Oxon. Women's Institutes and Climate Xchange, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Nov 2007.

Myles Allen, Energy and Climate: understanding climate change, Said Business School, Oxford, January 2008.

Myles Allen, What can be said about future climate? Quantifying uncertainty in multi-decade climate forecasting, Harvard University, February 2008.

Myles Allen, The Physics of Climate Change (454MB download), Oxford University, November 2008.

Myles Allen, Energy and Climate Change, Oxford University, November 2008.

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Links of Interest

[Why recreate the wheel; there are lots of great sources out there.; a good list of sources can be really useful to the reader.]

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Climateprediction.net In the Classroom

Climateprediction.net has put together science, maths and geography teaching materials based on the project. For some of these, you need to be running the climateprediction.net model on your school computers, for others you don't (although we'd very much like you to, there aren't many opportunities to take part in a real, sophisticated scientific experiement). The materials focus very much on the concepts of modelling and prediction.

You can


With climateprediction.net you can:

  • Learn about climate and how to predict it using models
  • Run the experiment and watch the weather patterns develop in your unique simulation of the Earth
  • Investigate some sample results we have already obtained

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