A critical assessment of climate modelling.
Tirsdag 30. juni 2026 kl. 19.00 – 20.30 Foredrag på Presterud Gård, Bekkestua ved Ph. D. Seok Soon Park (Clintel Ambassador for South Korea)
Recently, the IPCC gave up the catastrophic RCP8.5 scenario in CMIP7 climate models during preparing the Seventh Assessment Report (AR7). However, I
argue that the more important issue is not the abandonment of the catastrophic scenario but the credibility of the climate-modelling framework itself. In my
view, the entire modelling system is built upon assumptions and methodologies that are far less reliable than commonly portrayed.
The presentation critically examines several fundamental issues, including questionable initial conditions derived from reconstructed climate histories,
structural limitations associated with representing the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, and terrestrial ecosystems through over one hundred million
computational grid cells, and persistent difficulties in model calibration and verification. Particular attention is given to the treatment of clouds, one of the
most important regulators of the Earth’s climate system, where substantial uncertainty and parameterization remain unavoidable.
This presentation offers a critical assessment of climate modelling from the perspective of a scientist whose career has been devoted to the
development, calibration, and evaluation of environmental computer models.