Many of us will be familiar with the concept of the carbon cycle, but what about the silicon cycle?  Silicon is the second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust.  As a consequence of erosion, it is carried by rivers into the sea where organisms, such as sponges and diatoms (photosynthetic algae), convert the silicon in seawater into opal that ends up in ocean sediment when these organisms die.  This marine silicon cycle can be incorporated into climate models, since each step is influenced by climatic conditions, and the opal sediment distribution from deep sea sediment cores can be used for model validation.

This approach can assist in providing additional confidence in climate models, which are notoriously difficult to validate, and was described by Katharine Hendry, a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Bristol at a recent conference at the Royal Society.  This struck me as an out-of-the box or lateral way of seeking to increase confidence in climate models.

There are many examples in engineering where we tend to shy away from comprehensive validation of computational models because the acquisition of measured data seems too difficult and, or expensive.  We should take inspiration from sponges – by looking for data that is not necessarily the objective of the modelling but that nevertheless characterises the model’s behaviour.

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