Imagine for a moment if Microsoft had 24 competitors around the world, each building their own version of Microsoft Word. Imagine further that every few years, they all agreed to run their software through the same set of very demanding tests of what a word processor ought to be able to do in a large variety of different conditions. And imagine that all these competing \u00a0companies agreed that all the results from these tests would be freely available on the web, for anyone to see. Then, people who want to use a word processor can explore the data and\u00a0decide for themselves which one best serves their purpose. People\u00a0who have concerns about the reliability of word processors can analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each company’s software. Then think about what such a process would do to the reliability of word processors. Wouldn’t that be a great world to live in?<\/p>\n
Well, that\u2019s what climate modellers do, through a series of model inter-comparison projects. There are\u00a0around<\/a>\u00a025 major climate modelling labs around the world developing fully integrated global climate models, and hundreds of smaller labs building specialized models of specific components of the earth system. The fully integrated models are compared in detail every few years through the\u00a0Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects<\/a>. And there are\u00a0many other model inter-comparison projects<\/a>\u00a0for various specialist communities within climate science.<\/p>\n