Re: [asa] Physical Model for Climate

On Feb 22, 2007, at 5:14 AM, Dave Wallace wrote:

> The March 2007 edition of Scientific American page 71 shows a
> picture of a "RIVER MODEL at the National Center for Earth
> Dynamics". The constructed model is being used to study how
> sediments move in rivers. I seem to recall that other such physical
> models of rivers have been constructed. At first thought it would
> seem improbable that any reasonably sized scale model of a river
> could result in useful data. I suspect they also use digital
> models to aid their understanding of sediment flows.
>
> Have any physical models been attempted for climate? If so what
> results?

Yes and this is the fundamental reason why we are very confident of
the amount of forcing by GHG. The forcings by the greenhouse gases
have little uncertainty because their concentrations are accurately
measured in the atmosphere, and their infrared absorption properties
are very accurately measured in the laboratory (your physical model).
The two are put together using highly accurate numerical methods that
have little error.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Thu Feb 22 09:00:16 2007