ESP Projects Ltd: IT Support - Sheffield

A computer model of climate run on home PCs in conjunction with the BBC has yielded its first results. About 250,000 people downloaded software from climateprediction.net onto their home computers, each running a single simulation of the future. The results suggest the UK could be about 3C warmer than now in 75 years 'time, agreeing with other models. Full details were revealed last weekend but can also be seen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment. As well as the results, the BBC will be publishing a number of videos on how the impact will be felt in the UK.

Members of the scientific team say they have been staggered by the level of interest shown in the project. "When it started, we said to ourselves that we would be happy if 10,000 people took part" said Nick Faull, climateprediction.net project co-ordinator. "So to see more than 10 times as many signing up was fantastic" he told the BBC News website.

Users were spread across 171 counties. About two-thirds were in the UK; a number of counties including Surinam, Swaziland and Togo were represented by single users. Each downloaded a software pack which ran when their computer was otherwise idle, with results being fed back to the central server. Each simulation required about three months of computing time on an average PC.