New Initiative Seeks Better Weather and Prediction

ETH Zurich and a group of Swiss and German partner institutions have announced the launch of the EXCLAIM research initiative. The goal of the EXCLAIM project is to “dramatically increase the spacial resolution of [weather] models, thereby enhancing their accuracy in simulating weather on a global scale in a future, warmer world.”

Climatologists have gotten better at modeling weather at a local level, but attempts to model the kind of global weather patterns that could lead to accurate climate predictions have fallen short, largely due to the lack of precision in modeling techniques. Global climate models typically work by dividing the Earth into a grid, then calculating the climate conditions for each cell in the grid. Current models are based on cells of around 50-100 kilometers. EXCLAIM hopes to increase the resolution to more like 1 kilometer. The enhanced resolution should give scientists a more accurate look at where the global climate is going. See the story at the ETH Zurich website for more on the EXCLAIM project.