Browse Books

Reviewer: Jeffrey B. Putnam

Thanks to newspapers, television, blogs, scientific journals, political rallies, and even movies, it is unlikely that anyone reading this review will be unfamiliar with global warming and the controversies surrounding it. This book is not about the controversy-except tangentially-or the climate models; instead, it provides a context for the lay reader to become more informed about the data being used and how it is generated, modeled, and improved. As the author states, "it's models almost all the way down." In particular, very little of the raw data collected by weather stations, satellites, and balloons is usable as it is produced. Interpretation and reinterpretation is the norm. Measurements may not be taken at hourly intervals, and weather stations are rarely conveniently located at the grid points on which weather and climate models are based. Historically, sensors and reports are rarely consistent: a temperature sensor might find itself cooled by the shade of a new building or warmed by an asphalt parking lot; the measuring device might change from being a mercury thermometer to a thermocouple sensor; ocean temperatures may be taken at the surface or down a ways; weather balloons travel on the wind, so the temperatures they report at 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters are unlikely to be over the same spot on the surface; and satellite data is voluminous, but not always clear-cut or easy to interpret. Climatologists must live with the fact that raw data is interpreted and reinterpreted. This is true for most climate data, but particularly for historical data. Such data is rarely clean in the way we might expect scientific data to be clean, and it requires a good bit of modeling to be reasonably understood and used. The book nicely covers how weather prediction and climate models have shaped computing, with background that many readers may not know, and there is some information-though very few details-on how climate and weather models work. Early on, the author states his belief that we are in a period of man-made climate change and that this is a problem we must face or we risk very serious problems in the future. That being said, this book was not written to advance this claim, and both those who agree and those who disagree with the idea that anthropogenic global warming is a problem should read it. The book also covers the climate change debate, but this is one of the weaker sections; it might be slow reading for those who are not interested in these discussions. On the whole, this is a very good and informative read on the problems in atmospheric modeling and the way computers are-and have been-used in the process. Online Computing Reviews Service