Introduction To Three-dimensional Climate Modeling Review

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(More customer reviews)While this isn't a complete introduction, and while it may inevitably be slightly out of date, this is nonetheless the best introduction to climate modeling I've found. It presents the primary methods, and discusses the accomplishments and shortcomings of the field honestly (if at times a bit defensively).
There are clear limitations to climate modeling. For anyone with training in more mainstream Artificial Intelligence techniques, it's very uncomfortable to "test on the training data," which is exactly what climate modelers must do (i.e., they must run their models on the recent past, and if their models don't perform well on it, they will be tweaked until they do--effectively "cheating" because fidelity to the recent past is obviously no indication of predictive power if you tweak the model specifically to work on the recent past). Much of the uncertainty comes from sub-grid interactions that must be parameterized. For example, the formation of clouds is still an area of great uncertainty, and yet has an enormous effect on the climate. The authors recognize this issue, and identify it as a field where future research should focus.
On the other hand, climate modeling has been extremely useful as an inspiration to the imagination, and in working out the logical implications of what we currently believe to be true (both through those things that can be tested in a lab, like the absorption spectrum of carbon dioxide, or those that need to be parameterized, like cloud formation). We can't predict the future, but models allow us to get a sense of what may happen.
The authors discuss all of this, and illustrate it throughout. Of course, as scientists who have spent their lives in climate modeling, they are as supportive of climate modeling as one might expect. But they are also good scientists, and therefore open about the shortcomings.
In short, I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants an introduction to climate modeling. It's a fascinating and important subject that more people should know more about.

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This book provides an introduction to the development of three-dimensional climate models, including their four major components: atmosphere, ocean, land/vegetation, and sea ice. The fundamental processes in each component and the interactions among them are explained using basic scientific principles, and elements of the numerical methods used in solving the model equations are also provided. The authors show how the theory and models grew historically and how well they are able to account for known aspects of the climate system. This book is written so that a reader who is only vaguely aware of climate models will be able to gain an understanding of what the models are attempting to simulate, how the models are constructed, what the models have succeeded in simulating, and how the models are being used. Examples illustrating the use of the models to simulate aspects of the current climate system are followed by examples illustrating the application of the models to important scientific areas such as understanding paleoclimates, the last millennium, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the effects of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations on future climate change. The book is appropriate for scientists, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates and can be used as a textbook or for self study and reference. The authors have considerably updated the book from the first edition by adding descriptions of many techniques and results developed since the mid-1980s.

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