4
Chapter 1: The Development of Climate Research
mutually excluding explanations for the various facts, have to be sorted out
by resolving to the experience. The experimentalists would therefore set up
ad hoc physical systems, the experiments, in which the differences between
the theories can be artifically stressed as if they were under a magnifying
glass. This interplay was the foundation of the success of the natural sciences in the 1800's and the early part of this century. A foremost example
of a crucial experiment is the famous inteferometry experiment of Michelson
and Morley that put an end to the raucous debate on the existence of the
ether, the strange medium that was being supported by many physicists to
explain the propagation of the electromagnetic waves. In that case a single
experiment, in a smalliaboratory, was able to settle the dispute on ce for all.
The situation for climatology is very different. Climatology is a oneexperiment science. There is a single experiment for the entire discipline
that has been going on for hundreds of million of years, our planet. In this
case the mainstream scientific approach is not feasible. We can hardly modify
the rotation rate of the Earth or other planetary parameters and then observe
the result on the Earth climate. In fact, even the definition of the present
state of the Earth, namely the documentation of the present situation of the
Earth climate in physical, chemical and biological terms, is a tremendous
problem complicated by basic uncertainties and basic sampling problems in
space and time for the entire system.
The complexity of the climate system required from the early years the
usage of statistical methods to identify relations among the climate quantities that were hidden in the multitude of spatial and temporal scales in
play. As the science reached a mature stage, it came to rely more and more
on statistical techniques of increasing sophistication. Paul Valery, a French
philosopher, in the quote that opens this chapter, expressed some doubts on
the "quality" of scientific laws deduced with the help of statistical methods:
are statistically-obtained laws less pure than the others? Do they carry a
less profound significance ? In the course of this book it should become increasingly clear that statistical techniques are a powerful and clever tool that
can lead to an understanding of nature as profound as other scientific devices.
Like other powerful tools it works· wonders in competent hands, but it can
create havoc otherwise. Power tools can make your work easy, but they can
drill you a hole in the arm; it depends on you.
Just to give a feeling on how much climate science has depended on some
sort of statistical techniques, I will briefly discuss two cases that clarify how
much statistics, or some sort of careful consideration of data, was necessary
to understand a physical problem.
1.1.1 The Big Storm Controversy
The development of the atmospheric sciences was greatly accelerated when
observations became more reliable and more readily available, around 1860.
The great development of merchant marine trafik was a powerful motivation
Chapter 1: The Development of Climate Research
mutually excluding explanations for the various facts, have to be sorted out
by resolving to the experience. The experimentalists would therefore set up
ad hoc physical systems, the experiments, in which the differences between
the theories can be artifically stressed as if they were under a magnifying
glass. This interplay was the foundation of the success of the natural sciences in the 1800's and the early part of this century. A foremost example
of a crucial experiment is the famous inteferometry experiment of Michelson
and Morley that put an end to the raucous debate on the existence of the
ether, the strange medium that was being supported by many physicists to
explain the propagation of the electromagnetic waves. In that case a single
experiment, in a smalliaboratory, was able to settle the dispute on ce for all.
The situation for climatology is very different. Climatology is a oneexperiment science. There is a single experiment for the entire discipline
that has been going on for hundreds of million of years, our planet. In this
case the mainstream scientific approach is not feasible. We can hardly modify
the rotation rate of the Earth or other planetary parameters and then observe
the result on the Earth climate. In fact, even the definition of the present
state of the Earth, namely the documentation of the present situation of the
Earth climate in physical, chemical and biological terms, is a tremendous
problem complicated by basic uncertainties and basic sampling problems in
space and time for the entire system.
The complexity of the climate system required from the early years the
usage of statistical methods to identify relations among the climate quantities that were hidden in the multitude of spatial and temporal scales in
play. As the science reached a mature stage, it came to rely more and more
on statistical techniques of increasing sophistication. Paul Valery, a French
philosopher, in the quote that opens this chapter, expressed some doubts on
the "quality" of scientific laws deduced with the help of statistical methods:
are statistically-obtained laws less pure than the others? Do they carry a
less profound significance ? In the course of this book it should become increasingly clear that statistical techniques are a powerful and clever tool that
can lead to an understanding of nature as profound as other scientific devices.
Like other powerful tools it works· wonders in competent hands, but it can
create havoc otherwise. Power tools can make your work easy, but they can
drill you a hole in the arm; it depends on you.
Just to give a feeling on how much climate science has depended on some
sort of statistical techniques, I will briefly discuss two cases that clarify how
much statistics, or some sort of careful consideration of data, was necessary
to understand a physical problem.
1.1.1 The Big Storm Controversy
The development of the atmospheric sciences was greatly accelerated when
observations became more reliable and more readily available, around 1860.
The great development of merchant marine trafik was a powerful motivation