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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / SEPTEMBER 22, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 38
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Applications:
HUGE CLIMATE EXPERIMENT UNDERWAY
-- ALL WELCOME
A climate prediction experiment which is expected to involve two million
people around the world and produce a probable forecast for the 21st century
will be launched on Sept. 12. Anyone with a personal computer can join the
project and will be expected to conduct their own unique version of Britain's
Met Office climate model, simulating several decades of the Earth's climate at
a time.
"Everybody gets their own model so they can do an interesting bit of
research
on their PC," Dr. Myles Allen,University of Oxford, told a British Association
science conference on Thursday.
The results of the experiment will be sent via the Internet. The
simulations will be used to test different model versions and the results
will be collated to predict the 21st century climate.
"We can't predict which versions of the model will be any good without
running these simulations, and there are far too many for us to run them
ourselves," said Allen.
"Together, participants' results will give us an overall picture of how
much human influence has contributed to recent climate change and the
range of possible changes in the future," he added.
Allen said the program, which can be downloaded from
www.climateprediction.net
,
can run on an ordinary desktop
or
laptop
computer. It is easy to operate and does not slow down other tasks on the
computer.
The project, which is billed as the world's largest climate prediction
experiment, is a collaboration between the Met Office and several universities
including Oxford and Reading.
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