Characterizing the Relative Importance Assigned to Physical Variables by Climate Scientists when Assessing Atmospheric Climate Model Fidelity
Evaluating a climate model’s fidelity (ability to simulate observed climate) is a critical step in establishing confidence in the model’s suitability for future climate projections, and in tuning climate model parameters. Model developers use their judgement in determining which trade-offs between d...
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ftosti:oai:osti.gov:1459662 2023-07-30T04:07:03+02:00 Characterizing the Relative Importance Assigned to Physical Variables by Climate Scientists when Assessing Atmospheric Climate Model Fidelity Burrows, Susannah M. Dasgupta, Aritra Reehl, Sarah Bramer, Lisa Ma, Po -Lun Rasch, Philip J. Qian, Yun 2022-05-24 application/pdf http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1459662 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1459662 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-018-7300-x unknown http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1459662 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1459662 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-018-7300-x doi:10.1007/s00376-018-7300-x 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 2022 ftosti https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-018-7300-x 2023-07-11T09:27:40Z Evaluating a climate model’s fidelity (ability to simulate observed climate) is a critical step in establishing confidence in the model’s suitability for future climate projections, and in tuning climate model parameters. Model developers use their judgement in determining which trade-offs between different aspects of model fidelity are acceptable. However, little is known about the degree of consensus in these evaluations, and whether experts use the same criteria when different scientific objectives are defined. Here, we report on results from a broad community survey studying expert assessments of the relative importance of different output variables when evaluating a global atmospheric model’s mean climate. We find that experts adjust their ratings of variable importance in response to the scientific objective, for instance, scientists rate surface wind stress as significantly more important for Southern Ocean climate than for the water cycle in the Asian watershed. There is greater consensus on the importance of certain variables (e.g., shortwave cloud forcing) than others (e.g., aerosol optical depth). We find few differences in expert consensus between respondents with greater or less climate modeling experience, and no statistically significant differences between the responses of climate model developers and users. In conclusion, the concise variable lists and community ratings reported here provide baseline descriptive data on current expert understanding of certain aspects of model evaluation, and can serve as a starting point for further investigation, as well as developing more sophisticated evaluation and scoring criteria with respect to specific scientific objectives. Other/Unknown Material Southern Ocean SciTec Connect (Office of Scientific and Technical Information - OSTI, U.S. Department of Energy) Southern Ocean Advances in Atmospheric Sciences 35 9 1101 1113 |
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SciTec Connect (Office of Scientific and Technical Information - OSTI, U.S. Department of Energy) |
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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Burrows, Susannah M. Dasgupta, Aritra Reehl, Sarah Bramer, Lisa Ma, Po -Lun Rasch, Philip J. Qian, Yun Characterizing the Relative Importance Assigned to Physical Variables by Climate Scientists when Assessing Atmospheric Climate Model Fidelity |
topic_facet |
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES |
description |
Evaluating a climate model’s fidelity (ability to simulate observed climate) is a critical step in establishing confidence in the model’s suitability for future climate projections, and in tuning climate model parameters. Model developers use their judgement in determining which trade-offs between different aspects of model fidelity are acceptable. However, little is known about the degree of consensus in these evaluations, and whether experts use the same criteria when different scientific objectives are defined. Here, we report on results from a broad community survey studying expert assessments of the relative importance of different output variables when evaluating a global atmospheric model’s mean climate. We find that experts adjust their ratings of variable importance in response to the scientific objective, for instance, scientists rate surface wind stress as significantly more important for Southern Ocean climate than for the water cycle in the Asian watershed. There is greater consensus on the importance of certain variables (e.g., shortwave cloud forcing) than others (e.g., aerosol optical depth). We find few differences in expert consensus between respondents with greater or less climate modeling experience, and no statistically significant differences between the responses of climate model developers and users. In conclusion, the concise variable lists and community ratings reported here provide baseline descriptive data on current expert understanding of certain aspects of model evaluation, and can serve as a starting point for further investigation, as well as developing more sophisticated evaluation and scoring criteria with respect to specific scientific objectives. |
author |
Burrows, Susannah M. Dasgupta, Aritra Reehl, Sarah Bramer, Lisa Ma, Po -Lun Rasch, Philip J. Qian, Yun |
author_facet |
Burrows, Susannah M. Dasgupta, Aritra Reehl, Sarah Bramer, Lisa Ma, Po -Lun Rasch, Philip J. Qian, Yun |
author_sort |
Burrows, Susannah M. |
title |
Characterizing the Relative Importance Assigned to Physical Variables by Climate Scientists when Assessing Atmospheric Climate Model Fidelity |
title_short |
Characterizing the Relative Importance Assigned to Physical Variables by Climate Scientists when Assessing Atmospheric Climate Model Fidelity |
title_full |
Characterizing the Relative Importance Assigned to Physical Variables by Climate Scientists when Assessing Atmospheric Climate Model Fidelity |
title_fullStr |
Characterizing the Relative Importance Assigned to Physical Variables by Climate Scientists when Assessing Atmospheric Climate Model Fidelity |
title_full_unstemmed |
Characterizing the Relative Importance Assigned to Physical Variables by Climate Scientists when Assessing Atmospheric Climate Model Fidelity |
title_sort |
characterizing the relative importance assigned to physical variables by climate scientists when assessing atmospheric climate model fidelity |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1459662 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1459662 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-018-7300-x |
geographic |
Southern Ocean |
geographic_facet |
Southern Ocean |
genre |
Southern Ocean |
genre_facet |
Southern Ocean |
op_relation |
http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1459662 https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1459662 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-018-7300-x doi:10.1007/s00376-018-7300-x |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-018-7300-x |
container_title |
Advances in Atmospheric Sciences |
container_volume |
35 |
container_issue |
9 |
container_start_page |
1101 |
op_container_end_page |
1113 |
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1772820143264497664 |