Hi Jon
> 1) In this system, how long is a day in milliseconds? Is it the normal
> 24*60*60*1000?
Yes.
> Or is it somehow scaled so that a year of 360 days has
> the same number of milliseconds as an "average" Gregorian year?
No.
> 2) Is there any way of translating (even roughly) between 360-day and
> Gregorian calendars?
Yes and no. Mostly no. Some folk have been known to run a 360-day model and update the boundary conditions annually as they might were it a 365 day model. In that sense, the months correspond ok to the real months ... but this sort of model should never be used in any sort of "comparison with real days" mode - and indeed, no climate model (whether 365 day or not) is ever used that way. They're simply not constructed as initial condition models ... and even where they attempt to do that (seasonal forecasting), even in a 365 day model, there is no meaningful comparison between a prediction at tzero plus a few weeks and the actual day ... it's statistics all the way ... so that's a long way of saying there is no reason for such a conversion beyond month and year, and then only for statistical comparison.
Cheers
Bryan
--
Bryan Lawrence
Director of Environmental Archival and Associated Research
(NCAS/British Atmospheric Data Centre and NCEO/NERC NEODC)
STFC, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Phone +44 1235 445012; Fax ... 5848;
Web: home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence
Received on Thu Feb 04 2010 - 06:09:24 GMT
