Simplified “toy” models of various components of the climate system are a powerful tool for learning and exploration. Here are a collection of extremely simple models for you to play with and explore.

These simple models were coded in the R programming language, which is free and open-source and available on Mac, Linux, and Windows. There’s an R package called “shiny” that makes it almost ridiculously easy to turn simple R models into websites. I’ve included documentation and code on these sites so you can see how the models and websites work, and adapt them to your own problems if you want.

Climate

Land-Atmosphere Interactions

The Carbon Cycle

Great Toy Models at PhET

More Toy Models at Open Climate 101

Helpful Climate & Physics Calculators at Spark

Observations