Ten Things I Learned in the Climate Lab

1. Scientists do not blindly trust their own models of global warming. In fact, nobody is more aware of a model’s specific weaknesses than the developers themselves. Most of our time is spent comparing model output to observations, searching for discrepancies, and hunting down bugs.
2. If 1.5 C global warming above preindustrial temperatures really does represent the threshold for “dangerous climate change” (rather than 2 C, as some have argued), then we’re in trouble. Stabilizing global temperatures at this level isn’t just climatically difficult, it’s also mathematically difficult. Given current global temperatures, and their current rate of change, it’s nearly impossible to smoothly extend the curve to stabilize at 1.5 C without overshooting.
3. Sometimes computers do weird things. Some bugs appear for the most illogical reasons (last week, the act of declaring a variable altered every single metric of the model output). Other bugs show up once, then disappear before you can track down the source, and you’re never able to reproduce them. It’s not uncommon to fix a problem without ever understanding why the problem occurred in the first place.
4. For anyone working with climate model output, one of the best tools to have in your arsenal is the combination of IDL and NetCDF. Hardly an hour of work goes by when I don’t use one or both of these programming tools in some way.
5. Developing model code for the first time is a lot like moving to a new city. At first you wander around aimlessly, clutching your map and hesitantly asking for directions. Then you begin to recognize street names and orient yourself around landmarks. Eventually you’re considered a resident of the city, as your little house is there on the map with your name on it. You feel inordinately proud of the fact that you managed to build that house without burning the entire city down in the process.
6. The RCP 8.5 scenario is really, really scary. Looking at the output from that experiment is enough to give me a stomachache. Let’s just not let that scenario happen, okay?
7. It’s entirely possible to get up in the morning and just decide to be enthusiastic about your work. You don’t have to pretend, or lie to yourself – all you do is consciously choose to revel in the interesting discoveries, and to view your setbacks as challenges rather than chores. It works really well, and everything is easier and more fun as a result.
8. Climate models are fabulous experimental subjects. If you run the UVic model twice with the same code, data, options, and initial state, you get exactly the same results. (I’m not sure if this holds for more complex GCMs which include elements of random weather variation.) For this reason, if you change one factor, you can be sure that the model is reacting only to that factor. Control runs are completely free of external influences, and deconstructing confounding variables is only a matter of CPU time. Most experimental scientists don’t have this element of perfection in their subjects – it makes me feel very lucky.
9. The permafrost is in big trouble, and scientists are remarkably calm about it.
10. Tasks that seem impossible at first glance are often second nature by the end of the day. No bug lasts forever, and no problem goes unsolved if you exert enough effort.