5 most popular posts this month:

• The difference between Verification and Validation Nov 29, 2010 (4,109 views) Sometime in the 1990's, I drafted a frequently asked question list for NASA's IV&V facility....
• How to write a scientific abstract in six easy steps Jan 26, 2010 (3,256 views) Here's the abstract for a paper (that I haven't written) on how to write an abstract: How to Write...
• TEDx talk: Should we trust climate models? May 23, 2014 (174 views) At the beginning of March, I was invited to give a talk at TEDxUofT. Colleagues tell me the hardest...
• What Does the New IPCC Report Say About Climate Change? Oct 8, 2013 (144 views) I've been trawling through the final draft of the new IPCC assessment report that was released last...
• Getting the source code for climate models Jun 24, 2009 (95 views) First, we have to be clear what we mean by a climate model. Wikipedia offers a quick intro to types...

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All time most popular posts:

• How to write a scientific abstract in six easy steps Jan 26, 2010 (94,579 views) Here's the abstract for a paper (that I haven't written) on how to write an abstract: How to Write...
• The difference between Verification and Validation Nov 29, 2010 (80,788 views) Sometime in the 1990's, I drafted a frequently asked question list for NASA's IV&V facility....
• Notes from Hurricane Sandy Nov 1, 2012 (17,767 views) "] We spent some time in my climate change class this week talking about Hurricane Sandy - it's a...
• Initial value vs. boundary value problems Jan 16, 2010 (4,771 views) Weather and climate are different. Weather varies tremendously from day to day, week to week, season...
• What Does the New IPCC Report Say About Climate Change? Oct 8, 2013 (4,029 views) I've been trawling through the final draft of the new IPCC assessment report that was released last...
• A portable climate model Jul 22, 2010 (3,959 views) One of the exercises I set myself while visiting NCAR this month is to try porting the climate model...
• Who is pulling the strings? Apr 7, 2010 (3,235 views) My exposé of why academics' private emails sometimes seem cranky has gotten a lot of attention....
• Getting the source code for climate models Jun 24, 2009 (2,969 views) First, we have to be clear what we mean by a climate model. Wikipedia offers a quick intro to types...
• AGU Day 2: The role of CO2 in the earth's history Dec 17, 2009 (2,842 views) Yesterday afternoon, I managed to catch the Bjernes Lecture, which was given by Richard B. Alley:...
• Population growth vs. emissions growth Jun 18, 2009 (2,697 views) I gave my talk on SE for the Planet again this afternoon, to the local audience. We recorded it, and...
• TEDx talk: Should we trust climate models? May 23, 2014 (2,288 views) At the beginning of March, I was invited to give a talk at TEDxUofT. Colleagues tell me the hardest...
• The future of Software Engineering? Nov 11, 2010 (2,137 views) I went to a workshop earlier this week on "the Future of Software Engineering Research" in Santa Fe....
• Aerosols: Are They Good or Bad? Apr 3, 2012 (2,132 views) This week, I'm featuring some of the best blog posts written by the students on my first year...
• Simple Climate Models to play with in the classroom Jan 25, 2013 (2,084 views) I've been collecting examples of different types of climate model that students can use in the...
• Epistemology of Climate Modeling Sep 28, 2010 (2,071 views) This will keep me occupied with good reads for the next few weeks - this month's issue of the...
• AGU Day 3 part B: Data Provenance and Open Science Dec 21, 2009 (1,909 views) Wednesday morning also saw the poster session "IN31B - Emerging Issues in e-Science: Collaboration,...
• Tracking down the uncertainties in weather and climate prediction Jul 6, 2010 (1,758 views) Gavin beat me to posting the best quote from the CCSM workshop last week - the Uncertainty Prayer....
• A sad farewell to Susan Leigh Star Mar 27, 2010 (1,755 views) Susan Leigh Star passed away in her sleep this week, coincidently on Ada Lovelace day. As I didn't...
• High level architecture of earth system models Aug 11, 2010 (1,754 views) To get myself familiar with the models at each of the climate centers I'm visiting this summer, I've...
• Open Climate Science or Denial of Service attacks? Nov 26, 2009 (1,696 views) I wasn't going to post anything about the CRU emails story (apart from my attempt at humour),...
• Do Climate Models need Independent Verification and Validation? Nov 27, 2010 (1,667 views) A common cry from climate contrarians is that climate models need better verification and validation...
• Validating Climate Models Nov 30, 2010 (1,645 views) In my last two posts, I demolished the idea that climate models need Independent Verification and...
• What is Climate Informatics? Sep 21, 2012 (1,642 views) I've been using the term Climate Informatics informally for a few years to capture the kind of...
• The CMIP5 Climate Experiments Sep 15, 2011 (1,613 views) I'm on my way back from a workshop on Computing in the Atmospheric Sciences, in Annecy, France. The...
• Climate Model vs. Satellite Data Feb 14, 2014 (1,589 views) A few weeks ago, Mark Higgins, from EUMETSAT, posted this wonderful video of satellite imagery of...
• The Ethics of Climate Change Feb 24, 2011 (1,573 views) James Garvey: The Ethics of Climate Change. Continuum, 2008. One of the pleasures of teaching is...
• Disinformation Works (for receptive audiences) Feb 28, 2011 (1,555 views) Here's an interesting study by Lawrence Hamilton, published in Climatic Change in December:...
• What makes software engineering for climate models different? Mar 24, 2010 (1,526 views) This week I attended a Dagstuhl seminar on New Frontiers for Empirical Software Engineering. It...
• Climate Change: A Software Grand Challenge Aug 24, 2010 (1,474 views) Great news - I've had my paper accepted for the 2010 FSE/SDP Workshop on the Future of Software...
• Academics always fight over the peer-review process Mar 26, 2010 (1,416 views) Note: This started as a comment on a thread at RealClimate about the Guardian's investigation of the...
• If we can't make mistakes, then we can't do science Apr 9, 2010 (1,409 views) My debate with George Monbiot is still going on in this thread. I'm raising this comment to be a...
• What will sea level rise mean for Venice? Oct 28, 2010 (1,389 views) I took a break from blogging for the last few weeks to take a vacation with the family in Europe. We...
• Ethics of Climate - Talk by Ray Pierrehumbert Apr 23, 2010 (1,245 views) After catching the start of yesterday's Centre for Environment Research Day, I headed around the...
• Systems thinking and Genetically Modified food May 25, 2012 (1,215 views) I've been following a heated discussion on twitter this past week about a planned protest on Sunday...
• AGU Day 3 part C: How good are predictions from climate models? Jan 7, 2010 (1,205 views) The highlight of the whole conference for me was the Wednesday afternoon session on Methodologies of...
• Oil Shocks and Food Prices Feb 28, 2011 (1,170 views) I've been dipping into another new book this week, "Transport Revolutions: Moving People and...
• When did ignorance become a badge of honour for journalists? Aug 28, 2010 (1,164 views) Here's an appalling article by Andy Revkin on dotEarth which epitomizes everything that is wrong...
• Verification and Validation of Earth System Models Sep 18, 2010 (1,154 views) I've been meaning to write a summary of the V&V techniques used for Earth System Models (ESMs)...
• An AGU Global Environmental Change Bookshelf Dec 17, 2010 (1,146 views) I spent most of Wednesday attending a series of sessions featuring bestselling authors from the AGU...
• "Daddy, what did YOU do in the climate wars?" Apr 16, 2009 (1,072 views) When my children grow up, the world they live in is likely be very different from ours. There's a...
• How much extra energy are we adding to the earth system? Jan 11, 2012 (1,023 views) Update (Aug 15, 2013): After a discussion on Twitter with Gavin Schmidt, I realised I did the...
• A first glimpse at model results for the next IPCC assessment Sep 16, 2011 (1,020 views) Over the next few years, you're likely to see a lot of graphs like this (click for a bigger...
• A simpler slogan? Sep 15, 2011 (1,018 views) Al Gore is part way through a 24-hour, round-the-globe, live broadcast, called Climate Reality. I...
• How Big is the Climate Change Deficit? Feb 15, 2013 (1,004 views) Last week, Damon Matthews from Concordia visited, and gave a guest CGCS lecture, "Cumulative Carbon...
• Social epistemology and climate denialism Aug 6, 2009 (940 views) I've spent some time pondering why so many people seem unable or unwilling to understand the...
• xkcd: How to Write Good Code Jan 7, 2011 (930 views) It would be very easy to re-post pretty much everything from xkcd, and I'm trying hard to resist,...
• The History of Climate Models Nov 2, 2012 (911 views) For a talk earlier this year, I put together a timeline of the history of climate modelling. I just...
• The Software Architecture of Global Climate Models Dec 10, 2011 (910 views) On Thursday, Kaitlin presented her poster at the AGU meeting, which shows the results of the study...
• Climate Science and Software Quality Feb 12, 2010 (898 views) Here's a letter I've sent to the Guardian newspaper. I wonder if they'll print it? Professor...
• Crowd-Sourced Carbon Calculators (inspired by David Mackay) Mar 11, 2010 (889 views) On March 30, David Mackay, author of Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air, will be giving the...
• Why I don't eat meat Jul 22, 2011 (883 views) My wife and I have been (sort of) vegetarian for twenty years now. I say "sort of" because we do eat...
• Measuring Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Cities Apr 22, 2010 (876 views) This morning I attended the first part of the Centre for Environment's Research Day, and I'm glad I...
• Bill Gates is very wrong Jan 26, 2010 (860 views) In a blog post that was picked up by the Huffington post, Bill Gates writes about why we need...
• AGU talk: Tim Palmer on Building Probabilistic Climate Models Dec 19, 2010 (842 views) On Thursday, Tim Palmer of the University of Oxford and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather...
• What is Science Literacy? May 29, 2012 (827 views) A few people today have pointed me at the new paper by Dan Kahan & colleagues (1), which...
• AGU day 3: Science literacy means understanding the process Dec 20, 2009 (822 views) Picking up from my last post on communicating with policymakers, the first session on Wednesday...
• Formal Verification for Climate Models? Sep 23, 2011 (797 views) Valdivino, who is working on a PhD in Brazil, on formal software verification techniques, is...
• Why Systems Thinking? Aug 20, 2013 (786 views) Early in my career I trained as a systems analyst. My PhD was about the ability to identify and make...
• On the Uses and Abuses of Infrastructural Inversion Aug 26, 2010 (763 views) Nearly everything we ever do depends on vast social and technical infrastructures, which, when they...
• A Hierarchical Systems Approach to Model Validation Dec 6, 2011 (760 views) I'm at the AGU meeting in San Francisco this week. The internet connections in the meeting rooms...
• Successful Predictions (AGU 2012 Tyndall Lecture) Dec 11, 2012 (746 views) Last week I was at the 2012 AGU Fall Meeting. I plan to blog about many of the talks, but let me...
• National Geographic's 6 degrees Jul 11, 2011 (741 views) Okay, so it's a few years old, but I'd never seen this series of videos by National Geographic...
• New Grad Course on Computational Models of Climate Change Jan 6, 2013 (727 views) This week, I start teaching a new grad course on computational models of climate change, aimed at...
• Climate change is mankind's defining crisis (Mobiot/Lomborg debate) Dec 1, 2009 (706 views) This evening I'm attending a debate on climate change in Toronto, at the Munk Centre. George Monbiot...
• IEEE Software Special Issue on Climate Change: Software, Science and Society Dec 5, 2010 (678 views) Call for Papers: IEEE Software Special Issue on Climate Change: Software, Science and...
• Do "Many eyeballs make all bugs shallow"? Dec 11, 2009 (675 views) As a follow-on from yesterday's post on making climate software open source, I'd like to pick up on...
• Commuting by bike is a dangerous sport Jun 8, 2011 (667 views) I thought I'd write a little on cycling in the Toronto this month, partly because is Bike Month,...
• The first Numerical Weather Prediction on ENIAC Jan 25, 2011 (666 views) Last summer, when I was visiting NCAR, Warren Washington gave me some papers to read on the first...
• The Climate as a System, part 4: earth system feedbacks Sep 2, 2013 (646 views) At the start of this series, I argued that Climate Science is inherently a Systems Discipline. To...
• Data Challenges in Creating a new Surface Temperature Record Aug 25, 2010 (638 views) I've been invited to a workshop at the UK Met Office in a few weeks time, to brainstorm a plan to...
• The Internet: Saving Civilization or Trashing the Planet? Apr 10, 2013 (637 views) Next year, I'll be teaching a new undergraduate course, as part of an initiative by the Faculty of...
• One Model to Rule them All? Nov 6, 2011 (632 views) I had several interesting conversations at WCRP11 last week about how different the various climate...
• Another tiresome exoneration for climate science Jul 7, 2010 (624 views) The Muir Russell report came out today, and I just finished reading the thing. It should be no...
• The Principle of Complementarity (1) Mar 22, 2011 (619 views) I introduced some ideas from systems thinking last month, and especially the idea of second order...
• The Climate as a System, part 5: clouds Sep 3, 2013 (615 views) Yesterday I talked about three re-inforcing feedback loops in the earth system, each of which has...
• AGU session on Software Engineering for Climate Modeling Dec 14, 2010 (609 views) Here's the first of a series of posts from the American Geophysical Society (AGU) Fall meeting,...
• AGU Day 0: Restarting the Climate Conversation Dec 14, 2009 (585 views) This week I'll be blogging from the American Geosciences Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, one of the...
• The Climate as a System, part 1: the central equilibrium loop Aug 22, 2013 (582 views) I wrote earlier this week that we should incorporate more of the key ideas from systems thinking...
• Are you aware of your own (in)competence? Jun 11, 2009 (576 views) I've been thinking a lot recently about why so few people seem to understand the severity of the...
• Climate Models are Good Quality Software (?!) Apr 30, 2010 (575 views) Excellent news: Jon Pipitone has finished his MSc project on the software quality of climate models,...
• Another cognitive bug: Attempting to correct a misperception often reinforces it May 31, 2010 (555 views) I'm fascinated by the cognitive biases that affect people's perceptions of climate change. I've...
• Fun with urban transport data Jun 30, 2011 (543 views) I spent a little time this afternoon trying to get hold of data. I guess I have high expectations...
• Systems Thinking for Climate Systems Feb 15, 2011 (536 views) In pulling together my thoughts for a workshop last week on systems thinking, I've realised how much...
• Summer projects demo session Jul 20, 2009 (528 views) Next Wednesday, we're oganising demos of our students' summer projects, prior to the Science 2.0...
• The Affordances of Bike Lanes Jun 10, 2011 (527 views) As a followup to my post earlier this week about how dangerous cycling is in Toronto, I decided to...
• Modeling challenge (part 2) Apr 9, 2009 (498 views) Okay, here's a slightly different modeling challenge. It might be more of a visualization challenge....
• Shall we debate the existence of gravity? Mar 3, 2010 (490 views) Someone recently challenged me to debate the existence of climate change. Debates are extremely...
• Growth of code complexity Jul 2, 2009 (489 views) I'm busy revising our paper on the study of the software development processes at the Hadley Centre...
• How Climate Science is Done May 2, 2012 (487 views) In the talk I gave this week at the workshop on the CMIP5 experiments, I argued that we should do a...
• How long have we known? Feb 18, 2010 (470 views) I'm giving a talk today to a group of high school students. Most of the talk focusses on climate...
• Studying team coordination and software verification practices for earth system modeling May 19, 2010 (469 views) I've been busy the last few weeks setting up the travel details for my sabbatical. My plan is to...
• Some CMIP5 statistics Apr 29, 2012 (468 views) I'm attending a workshop this week in which some of the initial results from the Fifth Coupled Model...
• Skills needed for a successful PhD Apr 7, 2014 (465 views) My department is busy revising the set of milestones our PhD students need to meet in the course of...
• New Course: Systems Thinking for Global Problems Mar 28, 2012 (462 views) Sometime in May, I'll be running a new graduate course, DGC 2003 Systems Thinking for Global...
• The Need for T-shaped Students Aug 15, 2013 (462 views) I love working in a University. Every day I encounter new ideas, and I get to chat to some of the...
• You can't delegate ill-defined problems to software engineers Nov 16, 2010 (460 views) I had lunch last week with Gerhard Fischer at the University of Colorado. Gerhard is director of the...
• A target limit of 2°C. Is this possible? Jul 9, 2009 (460 views) Big news today: The G8 summit declares that climate change mitigation policies should aim to limit...
• What's the pricetag on a Global Climate Model? Sep 3, 2010 (458 views) Here's a question I've been asking a few people lately, ever since I asserted that climate models...
• Don't feed the trolls Aug 8, 2012 (457 views) It's AGU abstract submission day, and I've just submitted one to a fascinating track organised by...
• Liveblogging the EGU - day 4 Apr 23, 2009 (451 views) Day 4 at the EGU, in which I attend a session on education, in which we discover that it's becoming...