Get involved with the science of climate prediction

Cool Kids For A Cool Climate

It is not every day you get to be a scientist without using your brain, but even you can contribute to the science of climate prediction.

www.climateprediction.net is an experiment to run models of the earth's climate under many different conditions. It relies on members of the public downloading and running their own model on their home computer. The aim is to challenge the many varied climate predictions that exist at the moment and provide more accurate, tested, information.

The climate model showing snow and cloud cover

I am running my third model now. The first two ended up showing a totally frozen, dead planet - which is a bit scary. My third model is 18% through Phase I and still looks reasonably warm! I will keep you all informed of developments.

Update: The fourth model was going really well when my dear mother went and downloaded a stupid Christmas screensaver and corrupted the whole program. We are now on Phase I of our fifth model after downloading the program again. A new visualisation package for the program is now in the testing stage and looks kinda fun.

Climateprediction.net is run by Oxford University, the Open University, The Met Office - Hadley Centre, Rutherford Appleton Labs, Tessella Support Services plc and others.

To take part in the challenge of the climateprediction.net experiment you need to download some software which runs on your PC (whenever you are not using the processor for other jobs). The climateprediction.net software is a Windows-based version of a state-of-the-art climate model (courtesy of the Hadley Centre).

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