Simulating Nature: a Philosophical Study of Computer-simulation Uncertainties and Their Role in Climate Science and Policy Advice
这本书面向气候学相关领域的高年级研究生和学者，从哲学角度探讨气候模拟中的不确定性来源及其对科学和政策的影响，并指出书中未涵盖的统计降尺度、卫星数据和多模型集成等关键内容。
This book can be considered a conceptual book for high level graduate students as well as scholars from climatology-related fields who wish to understand the philosophy underlying computer-based simulation of climate. The book consists of an introduction with two main sections each of which is further divided into several subsections. The main parts of the book, sections 2 and 3, then discuss climate change simulations and the uncertainties arising from such simulations. Despite the clear-cut definition stated in the book, uncertainty can be considered as a very broad concept within a climatology framework. Uncertainty may arise from the choice of general circulation models, the scenario under consideration and both the simulation method and the choice of algorithm to implement this, as well as the nature of the variable to be modelled (e.g. temperature or precipitation) and its temporal characteristics. The stated aim of the book is to reveal the causes and results of climate characteristics observed both until today as well as those that may be observed in the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was launched in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. The first assessment report, the second assessment report, the third assessment report and the fourth assessment report of the IPCC were published in 1990, 1996, 2001 and 2007 respectively. Because of the date of this book it can therefore present the evaluations of the first four assessment reports. However, the IPCC decided to generate additional climate change scenarios based on new concentration scenarios at the meeting that was held in the Netherlands in 2007 with subsequent publication of the fifth assessment report in 2013. This work post dates the writing of this book. We feel that there are a few areas that could have usefully been included in this book. Firstly, although very long-term simulation results can be obtained through climate models, the fact that the uncertainties may increase over time is always highlighted in the IPCC models. However, to be able to translate the climate model results with coarse resolution estimates into local scale variables (e.g. precipitation, temperature and humidity), there should be a statistical relationship between regional atmospheric variables and the local scale variables. This popular approach is referred to as ‘statistical downscaling’ in the literature and was not described in this book. Equally, data obtained from meteorological satellites as well as the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reanalysis data sets are commonly used in the literature but are not referred to in this book. We believe that both aspects would be useful inclusions in future editions of the book. Another omission could be the fifth ‘Coupled model inter-comparison project’ that was carried out by the working groups within the World Climate Research Programme framework to examine the differences in climate models. In this context, the evaluation of the simulations of multiple models simultaneously (e.g. multimodel ensembles) has been discussed which has the potential to reduce the uncertainties and biases arising from climate scenarios and general circulation models. Some recommendations regarding the integration of projections of multiple models were prepared in a report by the IPCC in 2010 and were then presented (Knutti et al., 2010). In conclusion, this book can be considered as a philosophical research book for climatologists, but we feel that it needs to cover further topics in forthcoming editions.