Dr. Mann and Dr. Fuqing Zhang both professors of meteorology at The Pennsylvania State University were concerned that the direct use of climate model output would produce inaccurate information. They focused on temperature and precipitation in their research on global climate models.

They found that projects of temperature changes using global climate models became increasingly uncertain at scales below 600 miles. They summarized that while climate models might provide usful information about the overall warming expected, predicting the difference between smaller regions might prove futile.

Also working on this project was Wei Li, former post-doctoral fellow at Penn State now at NOAA/NWS?NCEP/Environmental Modeling Center, College Park, Md.
The National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research supported this work.