The previous story about global warming has an interesting background story regarding how the data were obtained. Basically, these data (pictured, right) were the result of the 250,000 people around the world helping the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists by downloading their software onto their home computers so they could compute a single simulation of the future.
The resulting data predict that temperatures in Britain will be about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer by 2020 than in the 1970s, chosen as the baseline for this project. Since temperatures are already nearly 1 degree Celsius warmer than in the 1970s, the increase over the next decade or so will be small if the model is correct. Additionally, these results suggest that the UK could be about 3 degrees Celsius warmer than now in 75 years' time, agreeing with other models.
The scientists expressed great surprise at the number of people who wanted to participate in the project.
"When it started, we said to ourselves that we would be happy if 10,000 people took part," said Nick Faull, climateprediction.net project co-ordinator.
"So to see more than 10 times as many signing up was fantastic," he said.
Users were spread across 171 countries. About two-thirds were in the UK; a number of countries including Surinam, Swaziland and Togo were represented by single users.
Each downloaded a software pack from climateprediction.net which ran when their computer was otherwise idle, with results being fed back to the central server. Each simulation required about three months of computing time on an average PC.
The global consensus of the data will become clearer in early February when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes the first segment of its fourth assessment report.
Cited story.
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