Your computer may help predict future climate

Climateprediction.net uses the processing power of thousands of personal computers (Photo: BBC, TTO)

Climate simulations play a role in predicting important changes in the earth's climate in the next century.

But the scope of these forecasts is too large, so how to deal with this uncertainty is a question for scientists.

If forecasts overestimate the speed and scope of weather changes, we may have to invest too much effort and money to improve a problem that is not as serious as simulations given. Conversely, if simulations give predictions that are too underestimated, we may fall into too little and too late to believe that weather changes are still under stable control.

The goal of scientists is to get hundreds of thousands of climate simulations with more limited errors and can make predictions with more accurate results. This technique is also known as overall prediction, which requires a huge amount of processing that even existing supercomputers cannot do. Therefore, UK scientists have launched a project at www.climateprediction.net that provides climate simulation software that runs on personal computers (PCs). This is the only practical solution because it can combine normal personal computer goods together. Each computer handles a small but important aspect of this global problem.

There are more than 250,000 people in 171 countries around the world who have downloaded the software on their computers, each operating a separate simulation of the future climate. The software runs when the computer is idle (idle) and the simulation results are sent to the central server and analyzed by a group of scientists funded by the Climate Research Council. Nature and close ties with Oxford University.

H. THANH