I mentioned about the difficulty in understanding and quantifying future atmospheric states in one of my previous blogs (see http://jrstalker.wordpress.com ). This blog elaborates on that difficulty with examples.
Most of us, earth system and atmospheric scientists, other scientists and engineers, and non-scientists of all other disciplines, can easily grasp the concept that the coupled Earth system is extremely complex to understand in its entirety and accurately quantify its future states, even on short time horizons. For example, our ability to accurately predict future atmospheric states is limited to two to three days at best. And yet, scientists have always tried to forecast future states on much longer time scales such as annual, decadal, and millennial scales. What is the basis for such claimed ability to predict future atmospheric states on much longer time scales accurately? It is all based on our presumed ability to separate scales, both spatially and temporally, and treat some of those scales independently of the others to perform predictive projections of future atmospheric states. This ‘separation of scales’ certainly helps overcome the inherent difficulty noted here in accurately predicting the coupled solar-earth system but it does not actually help us solve the underlying problem that we face.
In the old days of not too long ago when sparse observations were not uncommon and limited computational resources were a norm, such unsupportable scale separation was not only encouraged but was perhaps the only and most effective approach that could be employed. We have made tremendous strides on those two fronts, i.e., the density of observations has increased significantly, just as the available computational resource. Unfortunately, though, our legacy approach based on scale separation lives on. Unless we vehemently question this fundamentally flawed premise…click here to read the full article!
Please visit www.linkedin.com/in/resprincfounder to learn more about the author, Dr. James Stalker.
