Credulous Modellers and Suspicious Experimentalists? Comparison of Model Output and Data in Meteorological Simulation Modelling

Abstract

This article studies the relation between two specialised practices in meteorology, modelling and field measurements. This relation is embodied in a number of joint practices of which model evaluation is one of them. The relationship between theory, model and observation has been of concern for many philosophers of science whereas the relationship between the working practices that underlie theories, models and observations, has received less attention. This paper describes and compares the practices that generate observation data and model output and the way different roles that fieldworkers and modellers have in this process are established. Next, different practice-oriented perspectives on the status of models, data and experiments are analysed and the discussion then moves on to the different trouble-shooting strategies scientists deploy, depending on their position within the discipline. It is shown that these strategies are often based on the ideas and judgements that modellers and experimentalists express about each other, and by implication, about their own role in the meteorological enterprise.