Hi. My name is Dr. Jonathan Fairman, and I'm a research associate in the Centre for Atmospheric Science, at the University of Manchester. I'm here today to introduce you to Build Your Own Earth, a tool that we have designed to introduce you to Global Climate Model Output, so that you can have a greater understanding of the processes and variables that control the earth's climate. Originally, we had imagined that Build Your Own Earth would be an online tool, where you could construct your own planet literally from the ground up, making your own oceans, continents, mountains, rotation rate, and other characteristics. You would then be able to click go, and a full model climate would be produced. However, we are simply not able to produce a model climate that quickly, due to today's computer speeds, so we've had to do something a little bit different. Build Your Own Earth is based on the fast ocean atmosphere model, or FOAM. This is a global circulation model that features coupled models of sea ice, oceanic, and atmospheric processes. We have selected around 50 different Earths for you, running the model simulations and creating graphics of their output that you can view. There are three different categories of planets that you are able to view, recent earths, ancient earths and alien earths. Recent earths are very much like the planet that we have today, except for some changes in certain parameters. These include a modern day, or 2015 simulation, with greenhouse gas concentrations, solar insulation, and other orbital parameters, much like they are today. We have some other simulations that show how changes in these parameters impact the Earth's climate, so that you can see why it's important that alterations in green house gas concentrations, or the Earth's tilt, can have massive impacts about the weather that we experience at the surface. Ancient Earths show snapshots of past geologic eras, such as the last glacial maximum around 21,000 years ago, through the Miocene, Jurassic, Triassic, Carboniferous, Cambrian, and Ediachran. We have tried to replicate greenhouse gas concentrations for these specific eras, but there is a lot of uncertainty about what these may be. What we have done, however, is set the past geography of these times long ago, so that you can see what impact that Pangea has on forming a continental climate, and how the shallow sea of the Triassic could impact precipitation patterns. Alien Earths try to break down the Earth's climate into its simplest forms. For these, we try to look what the impact of very simple planets have on global climate. For example, we have planets that consist of all water, or the aqua planet, all land, or the terra planet, and all ice, the ice planet. Or as we refer to it here in the office, Hoth. We also have several, idealized, continental simulations so that you can look through the impact of landforms, and how they may control oceanic circulation, which is a lot more than you may think. We'd like for you to explore as many of these simulations and climate parameters as possible, so that you can have a better understanding about how these variables truly control the Earth's climate. Build Your Own Earth is available at buildyourownearth.com, and it's free for all to use. So feel free to share it among your families and friends. There is also a walk-through video that explores today's climate simulation, and points out fields that you may be interested in, hopefully showing you what to look for. Happy exploring.
