Escape From Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It
by Erica Thompson · 6 Dec 2022 · 250pp · 79,360 words
. To evaluate updated models, we don’t just want to wait for more data to come in. In addition, we can generate an archive of hindcasts: retrospective forecasts made with the current version of the model. Today’s best weather model could use the data available on 1 January 1950 to
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make a hindcast of the weather on 2 January 1950, effectively generating the forecast that could have been made on that date if only today’s model had
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been accessible at the time, and then comparing it with the actual weather recorded on 2 January 1950. Hindcasts are used to generate reliability statistics for new models before a sufficient quantity of out-of-sample (true forecast) data becomes available. Yet
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not forecasts: although they do not make direct use of the data they are trying to forecast, they do make indirect use of them. The hindcast made with today’s model for summer 2003 is able to forecast the heatwave well, but only because the knowledge that such an event could
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happen was incorporated into the development of the model. Therefore, the performance of hindcasts always gives an optimistic estimate of the performance of the model in true forecast mode. Yet the only real-world use of the model is
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them
by Donovan Hohn · 1 Jan 2010 · 473pp · 154,182 words
’d already opened it to January 10, 1992. There were the coordinates, the magic coordinates. THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH OSCURS could now reconstruct, or “hindcast,” the routes the toys had traveled, producing a map of erratic trajectories that appeared to have been hand-drawn by a cartographer with palsy. Beginning
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the vicinity of Hawaii. In 1961, they would have drifted along the California coast. Though with far less certainty, OSCURS could forecast as well as hindcast, and in this respect, Ebbesmeyer and Ingraham were like meteorologists of the waves. Because the weather of the ocean usually changes more slowly than the
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never stand up in court. Given the stakes involved, APL subsidized an expensive forensic investigation led by Willa France. France hired three meteorological consultants to hindcast the sea conditions with computers. Next, she hired oceanographers to computeranimate what would happen to a C-11 container ship under the conditions the China
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of these waves have qualified as genuine Monsterwellen? Probably not. The wave the officers described was monstrously large (taller than France’s brownstone) but, computerized hindcasts showed, not statistically improbable. The ship was rolling so heavily, dipping its bridge wings so close to the water as it pitched into the troughs
Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
by Mark Lynas · 1 Apr 2008 · 364pp · 101,193 words
to total remobilisation once global warming reaches three degrees. Again, several different computer models were used, and tested initially to check their ability to successfully ‘hindcast’ the observed 1961-90 regional climate. All passed the test. Although the models do not make a perfect match with Hoerling's study, they do
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response to the heat-trapping effects of greenhouse gases are now pretty close to reality. And model evaluation is based on much more than guesswork. ‘Hindcasting’ the twentieth century is one way of checking that a model works, but models can also be calibrated using other time periods-the depths of
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climate xv, 105-7, 194-6, 217, 248-51 El Niño 113-14 global and regional models 106 Hadley Model 39, 59, 105-6, 134 hindcasting 104, 106 hurricane 128 hydrological 139 sea temperature 110 conflict 6, 212-14 over climate refugees 141, 159, 179 over habitable land xxii, 197 over
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
by Alex Epstein · 13 Nov 2014 · 257pp · 67,152 words
have to make sure we have evidence of models predicting climate in advance. Why do I say “in advance”? Because part of climate models involve “hindcasting” or “postdicting”—that is, coming up with a computer program that “predicts,” after the fact, what happened. There are reasons to do this—namely, it
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Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, who collects satellite measurements of temperature. Even though the modern models have the benefit of hindsight and “hindcasting,” reality is so inconsistent with the theory that they can’t come up with a plausible model. And note how radically different all the predictions
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, 74 statistics: about disasters, 120–26, 121–25 cherry-picking, 54 computer models, 100–104, 102, 103, 108, 138 explicit endorsement without qualification, 110–11 hindcasting with, 101, 103 limited value of polls, 27 manipulation of, 17, 29, 99, 108, 109, 111–12 political uses of, 109 satellite data, 120 speculative
The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us
by Diane Ackerman · 9 Sep 2014 · 380pp · 104,841 words
, objects, streets, and piers—all gone. Hurricane season brings a humbling reminder that, despite our best efforts and prophesies, nature remains unpredictable. Even aided by hindcasts, as forecasters call reading the entrails of past hurricane seasons to predict the future, we really don’t know what stew of storms the Atlantic