THE only difference between some men and many boys is the price of their toys. This observation has much relevance to decisions made over recent years at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, BOM.
A toy is a game, a gadget, a gizmo that may have no real practical value. But of course it is fun to play with.
They have a lot of fun at the BOM playing with General Circulation Models. These models, run on supercomputers, are essentially about attempting to forecast future and past climate including cyclones, droughts and ice sheets crashing into the Southern Ocean. The super computers are worth tens of millions of dollars and there are over 130, mostly big boys, playing with them from 9am until 5pm Monday to Friday at the BOM in Melbourne.
It all happens at considerable expense to the Australian taxpayer and I say they do little more than play, because the output from their favorite model generates mostly nonsense at least when it comes to that most important of all climate variable for Australians – rainfall.
The BOM has directed most of its research efforts over recent decades towards modeling climate systems as part of a global effort that began back in the 1950s when a small team of American scientists set out to model the atmosphere as an array of thousands of numbers. [Read more…] about Costly Climate Model Just a Big Boy’s Toy
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.