World's Largest Climate Change Experiment

Donate your computer’s spare number-crunching power and contribute to the world’s most ambitious climate modelling experiment.

Climate scientists, led by Oxford University have developed an experiment for the BBC using the Met Office climate model. And they need thousands of people to help!

Using a technique known as distributed computing, they’re hoping to harness the power of thousands of PCs around the world. If 10,000 people sign up, they’ll be faster than the world’s biggest computer. And they’re hoping to be even better than that.

How do you take part?

Taking part is easy. You download a simple programme, which doubles as a screensaver and once installed your computer will take care of the rest. You don’t have to send anything. You don’t have to enter any data. In fact – if you decide not to 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.
How does it work?
The experiment works by making use of your spare processing power. All you have to do is use your computer exactly as you normally would, and the programme will run calculations in the background. When it’s done, it will send results back to scientists in Oxford, who will combine everyone’s results. The more people who take part, the more complete their predictions about the future climate will be.