Ensemble Climate Prediction: Key Questions and Controversies

导言：PI计划花一年的时间进行全职研究，考察与某一特定类型的气候模型有关的方法论和哲学问题，该模型处于预测工作的前沿。她将研究模型集成的问题，这与模型评估的一般问题有关。PI已经有了关于这个主题的手稿，并希望进行更详细的分析。争论的焦点是如何解释科学中的计算模型，它们在预测中的应用，以及它们的评估等一般性问题。她将研究集合预测作为概率分布的表示，并在此过程中解决以下问题。您如何判断模型质量（意味着哪些模型应该包含在集合中）？如何使用集成建模的结果？模型和推断的概率应该如何解释？还有其他选择吗？知识价值：气候科学家之间关于集合预测实践的分歧为哲学工作提供了一个绝佳的机会。拟议的工作将通过将气候科学纳入该领域所关注的科学领域来加强科学哲学，补充生物学，物理学和心理学的工作。这个项目背后的想法是突出的，在解释这种预测模型的结果时，方法上的挑战是显而易见的，也不是问题的哲学维度更引人注目。更广泛的影响：提案中提出的哲学问题引起了广泛的兴趣，涵盖了所有的建模科学，包括认知科学、神经科学、地理等。研究人员应该能够通过检查生物学和/或物理学中集成建模的异同，并以一种广泛受众可以访问的方式描述结果，从而最大限度地发挥这种潜在影响。

Introduction: The PI proposes to spend a year of full-time research examining methodological and philosophical questions having to do with a particular type of climate modeling, one that is at the forefront of prediction efforts. She will investigate the issue of model inclusion in ensembles, which ties in with general issues of model evaluation. The PI already has a manuscript on this topic, and wants to develop a more detailed analysis. At issue are general questions of how to interpret computational models in science, their use in predictions, and their evaluation. She will investigate the presentation of ensemble predictions as probability distributions, and in doing so will address the following questions. How do you judge model quality (meaning which models should be included in the ensemble)? How should the results of ensemble modeling be used? How should the models and the inferred probabilities be interpreted? What alternatives are there? Intellectual Merit: The disagreement among climate scientists about the practices of ensemble prediction provides a prime opportunity for philosophical work. The proposed work will strengthen philosophy of science by bringing climate science into the realm of sciences attended to by the field, complementing work on biology, physics, and psychology. The idea behind this project is outstanding noting that the methodological challenges in the interpretation of the results of predictive modeling of this sort could not be more stark, nor the philosophical dimension of the issues more compelling. Broader Impact: The philosophical issues raised in the proposal are of wide interest, spanning all of the modeling sciences, including cognitive science, neuroscience, geography, etc. The researcher should be able to maximize this potential impact by examining the similarities and dissimilarities with ensemble modeling in biology and/or physics and to describe the results in a way that is accessible to a broad audience.