UH researchers praised for work on climate prediction

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer

Hawai'i will get climate predictions with unprecedented detail once a new computerized climate model comes into play.

University of Hawai'i researchers are among the primary authors of the climate tool, called the International Pacific Research Center Regional Climate Model.

The model already is being tested against actual information on the monsoon season in Asia and should be aimed at the Hawai'i region shortly, said Bin Wang, a meteorology professor at the center, an agency of the university's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.

"It's going to be very useful," he said.

But it will be several years before average folks in Hawai'i can expect to take advantage of it.

Most existing computer models for predicting climate — how wet or dry it will be, and which way the average winds will blow over the next month, for example — are useful only over a very large region.

"We need higher-resolution models," Wang said.

Wang and colleagues Omer Sen and Yuqing Wang, also professors at the University of Hawai'i, are the authors of the new model.

If it works as expected, it should be able to give farmers detailed weather predictions based on location, such as on the windward side of islands, or in areas with heavy vegetation or where the vegetation has largely been removed.

"The model accuracy seems pretty good right now," said Yuqing Wang, based on initial tests comparing model results with actual weather conditions in the 1998 monsoon season over East Asia.

The computer model takes information such as wind, air pressure, temperature, rainfall and vegetation cover, and predicts what will happen with weather in the future.

"We could predict monthly mean precipitation, temperatures and wind speeds," he said.

Farmers could take advantage of it, as could local water utilities, which would get clues about the recharge of groundwater in certain areas and the strength of flows in streams and rivers.

The key to using the model effectively is to test it rigorously against actual conditions, Yuqing Wang said.

"Sometimes you get the right results for the wrong reasons," he said.

Climate models are not rare. Researchers in other countries have their own models, and scientists regularly check in with one another.

In the recent First IPRC Regional Climate Modeling Workshop, scientists from several Mainland institutions as well as from China and Japan shared their research on such computer modeling.