Basic Climate Model Part 4: Greenhouse Forcing

In our final installment on building an Earth-like basic climate model, we will add in the direct greenhouse effect from CO2 forcing, and water vapor feedback. We will find how much our model increases its temperature with a doubling of the CO2 forcing, a value we call "climate sensitivity". We also examine the various feedbacks we did not incorporate in our model. Want more modeling videos? Let me know.

[angelafay]

I really enjoyed these videos. I'm not a mathematician nor a climate scientist, but I really started to understand the complexity of the system. I down loaded the application and, following the instructions, ran my models. What a sense of achievement. So thank you, and yes I would love to learn more about how to add in more complexities. For example, by increasing f (CO2) we should also reduce albedo and increase water vapour? How can we put in time elements that  would take into account feedbacks (they're not necessarily immediate).
So thanks again.

[xyzzy]

This is very interesting, but laughably simple. The end of the video speaks about all the things that were neglected in the model. If you are trying to understand the basics of the climate, this model is great. However, it is crazy to try to pull any recommendations about policy change out of these type of highly simplified models.

[bartonpaullevenson]

You've got the atmospheric temperature equal to the surface temperature. It should be lower.

[mskellyrlv]

"We know that every model is wrong." We know that this one is wrong, because it doesn't predict the temperature today given that in 1999. That really is all anyone needs to know to realize that the "science" behind this is wrong.