title: Looking for a general for some modern major models.
abstract: Computer climate models are some of the most complex scientific structures ever conceived. Consisting of hundreds of thousands of equations and running on supercomputers capable of trillions of operations per second, they chart the evolution of past and future climates across thousands of years. These simulations are breathtaking in their qualitative detail and vastly ambitious in their quantitative exactitude. However, their progress has recently been challenged by the very size and complexity of the models, factors that are also paralleled in the communities of scientists that build them. This complex co-evolution of computers and scientific communities gives us insight into the promise and limits of sciences driven by exponential increases in computing power.
authors.affiliation: Honors Program, CMB 1061, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA 98416-1061, USA. greene@ups.edu
authors.forename: Mott T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Greene
mesh_terms: D002980:Climate; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000266:history*; D005544:Forecasting; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D014887:Weather