In an article titled 'General Circulation Models of the Atmosphere,' Spencer Weart tell us that John von Neumann began advocating using computers to study the climate back in 1946, shortly after his computer ENIAC became operational. Getting grants from the Navy, the Air Force and the Weather Bureau, the study of climate began.
So 1946 was the starting point. For the next 25 years, the American Meteoroligical Society's entire spectrum of journals (including the Journal of Applied Meteorology, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Journal of Physical Oceanography, Monthly Weather Review and more...) published a total of 111 papers containing the phrase "climate models" somewhere in the text or title. The first one was titled 'The Unusual Weather and Circulation of the 1948-1949 Winter,' by William H. Klein. It was published in April 1949, 58 years ago. Two articles were published containing that phrase in 1950.
Let's pretend that each paper published with the phrase "climate models" is one unit of advancing human knowledge. If human knowledge doubles every five years, how many papers should be published in 2005? We know that the percentage growth should be 14.87%, and we know we should expect to see 2,048 articles in 2004. So... drum roll please... it's 881. Less than half of what we would expect. Lest you think it was just an off year, in 2005 it was 899 and in 2006 it actually dropped to 894.
I can think of a dozen possible explanations--a presidential administration unfriendly to the concept, waiting on the IPCC to publish findings in 2007... but the fact is, if we have doubled our knowledge of climate models in the past 5 years, we're not writing about it in America.
Is the rest of the world making up for America's shortfall? Well, not if you're depending on the International Journal of Meteorology, which returns 8 results for a search on climate models over a 25-year span. (But I think it's a search issue.) The International Journal for Climatology returns 37 results. I'm sure I'm missing important sources, but none are jumping up and biting me. The Royal Meteorological Society has 36 results. The UK government is considerably more supportive of research into global warming than the current American administration. I really thought there would be more.
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