U.K. Calls on PC Users to Help With Global Climate Experiment
Concerned about the world’s climate and wondering how you can help improve scientific understanding of it? Wonder no more. If you own a PC, you can become part of what’s being billed as the world’s largest climate-prediction experiment. Organized by a coalition of British universities and corporations, the experiment is expected to produce “the world’s most comprehensive probability-based forecast of 21st century climate.” How? Individual computer-users who join the experiment will download a unique version of a climate model developed by the Hadley Centre, one of the world’s most important headquarters for climate science. The model will run when the computer is on but no other applications are in use, and the results will be sent back to the organizers via the Internet when the experiment is complete. “Together, participants’ results will give us an overall picture of how much human influence has contributed to recent climate change, and of the range of possible changes in the future,” said Oxford University’s Myles Allen.
