Oxford Seeks PC Users for Climate Change Experiment

Scientists set out on Tuesday to harness the power of home computers to predict climate change more accurately than ever before. Using the reach of the BBC and the forecasting techniques of Britain’s Meteorological Office, they hope to persuade thousands of people to take part.

“If 10,000 people join in, you are already bigger than the world’s biggest supercomputer,” said lead scientist Myles Allen from Oxford University.

“The more we get, the more accurate will be our predictions. We have got 500,000 climate variations stacked up and ready to go,” he told reporters. “Each person who joins in will get a slightly different model for their computer to crunch, so the more people we get the more confident we can be of our results,” Allen said.

Reuters - Oxford seeks PC users to help map climate change

Taking part is easy. All we’re asking you to do is download a simple programme, which doubles as a screensaver. Once you’ve installed it, your computer will take care of the rest. You don’t have to send us anything. You don’t have to enter any data. In fact – if you decide not set the programme as your screensaver, you probably won’t even notice it’s there.

However, if you want to, you can follow the progress of your experiment on a 3D spinning globe.

BBC - Climate Change Experiment