The Earth is flat for climate modelers

Did you know that? Modelers don’t stop surprising us!!!

If you find this hard to believe, read the paper by Michael J. Prather and Juno C. Hsu, from the University of California, which has recently been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA.

See the reference and the significance statement below the flat Earth

Reference

Prather, M.J. & Hsu, J.C. 2019. A round earth for climate models. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 116: 19330-19335.

Significance

Early climate and weather models, constrained by computing resources, made numerical approximations on modeling the real world. One process, the radiative transfer of sunlight through the atmosphere, has always been a costly component. As computational ability expanded, these models added resolution, processes, and numerical methods to reduce errors and become the Earth system models that we use today. While many of the original approximations have since been improved, one—that the Earth’s surface and atmosphere are locally flat—remains in current models. Correcting from flat to spherical atmospheres leads to regionally differential solar heating at rates comparable to the climate forcing by greenhouse. gases and aerosols. In addition, spherical atmospheres change how we evaluate the aerosol direct radiative forcing.