Wheres the Heat?
July 22, 2005 “It’s a match!” For detectives in a crime story, identical fingerprints or cloth fibers might solve the case. For scientists, it could be something equally dramatic. It might be real-life observations that match the simulations of their computer models. Image right: __JPL_CAPTION_1 + Browse version of image –> Such a match would provide evidence that they understand enough about a complex system to be able to understand its past behavior and perhaps anticipate its future behavior. For researchers studying climate change, the proof they’ve been looking for is in the ocean. A group of scientists led by Dr. James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently published their findings that Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun than it is emitting back to space. Their climate model predicted that growing amounts of human-produced greenhouse gases would trap solar radiation and lead to a warming planet. If the model were correct, it should be possible to f
