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Presentation: "Uses of Metrics in the Evaluation and Application of Climate Models" - LLNL

Ginny Brown
Initial Publication Date: April 29, 2016

Summary

This presentation describes the purpose of performance metrics as they relate to the analysis of climate models.

Also see teaching materials.


Learning Goals

To demonstrate the following:

  • The usefulness of any particular set of metrics depends on the application.
  • The relationship between a climate model's skill in simulating present conditions and its predictive reliability is largely unknown.
  • At this time, there is little justification for reliance on any single metric to gauge simulation quality

Context for Use


Description and Teaching Materials

This presentation addresses the following points:

  • Background, orientation, definitions
  • Uses of metrics
  • What's nexts next?

View Full Presentation >> "Uses of Metrics in the Evaluation and Application of Climate Models"

Teaching Notes and Tips

Challenges faced in evaluating climate models: Variety of fields to consider

-Multitude of phenomena / processes of interest

-Range of time and space scales

-A choice of error measures (e.g., RMS error, correlation)

-Limited opportunities for verification of "forecasts"

-Must account for observational errors/uncertainty

-Some aspects of simulations are not deterministic


Assessment

Fundamental research questions:

What is the relationship between skill in simulating observed phenomenon and (unobserved) future climate?

  • "Perfect model" experiments
  • Identification of processes critical to future climate change that can be thoroughly validated on shorter time-scales
  • For a given application, is there some minimum set of metrics that can be objectively justified for gauging climate model reliability?
  • Can we justifiably construct a single metric
  • To gauge reliability of individual model predictions?
  • To produce an optimally-weighted consensus prediction?

References and Resources


Citation

Brown, G. (2011). Presentation: "Uses of Metrics in the Evaluation and Application of Climate Models" - LLNL. Retrieved from http://www.camelclimatechange.org/view/presentation/51cbf1e87896bb431f6a7294