Firsch, Mathias; Lam, Vincent Minh Duc (22 September 2023). Process understanding in climate science (Unpublished). In: The 9th Biennial Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Belgrade.
Our main current evidence for the future evolution of the climate system is given by comprehensive climate models. Yet projections based on these models are plagued by large, persisting uncertainties—related, e.g., to the fact that models are “black boxes” and that the collection of models represents an “ensemble of opportunity” not suited for a probabilistic assessment. Uncertainties affect, in particular, our assessment of the upper range of projected warming and our confidence in being able to avoid a temperature zone where climate impacts would reach catastrophic proportions.
In response to these problems climate modelers recently have increasingly stressed the importance of process understanding, in addition to projections derived from comprehensive models. Thus, in the latest IPCC report process understanding features prominently in discussions of a key climate quantity: the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), and especially in attempts to understand the upper end of the range of projected values for ECS with the help of “physically plausible high impact scenarios”.
Yet, climate modelers offer no explicit account of what they mean by process understanding, the notion seems to refer to different theoretical approaches in different contexts, and it remains unclear what its epistemic force is and what its role in uncertainty management can be. In this talk we want to distinguish different ways in which this notion is used. These include: (i) high resolution modelling of individual feedback processes; (ii) exploring parameter spaces to probe for counterfactual dependences among parameter values (e.g., through so-called “emulator models”); and (iii) qualitative characterizations of physical dependencies underwriting dependencies among parameter values. We explore possible relations among these types of process understanding, investigate their relation to causal understanding and to the storyline approach, and ask to what extent process understanding, variously disambiguated, can help in managing the deep uncertainties associated with climate modeling projections.
Item Type: |
Conference or Workshop Item (Speech) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Philosophy 06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Art and Cultural Studies > Institute of Philosophy > Theoretical Philosophy 10 Strategic Research Centers > Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR) |
UniBE Contributor: |
Lam, Vincent Minh Duc |
Subjects: |
100 Philosophy 100 Philosophy > 120 Epistemology |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Vincent Minh Duc Lam |
Date Deposited: |
08 Mar 2024 09:30 |
Last Modified: |
08 Mar 2024 09:30 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/193866 |
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