[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Stochastic climate models: Part I. Theory

## Details

**Authors** Hasselmann, Klaus

**Year** 1976

**Publisher** Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Climatology

**Secondary disciplines** Meteorology, Oceanography, Physics

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.3402/tellusa.v28i6.11316) 
10.3402/tellusa.v28i6.11316

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To develop a model of climate variability in which slow climate change results from the integrated response to random short-period weather forcing.

### How they did it (methods)

Theoretical derivation. The climate system is split into a fast weather component and slow climate components, and the weather is treated as random forcing in a stochastic (Fokker-Planck) description of the climate's probability distribution.

### What they found (results)

The model yields 'red' variance spectra, with more variance at low frequencies, which are qualitatively consistent with observations. Without a stabilizing feedback, climate variance grows without bound, like Brownian motion. With stabilizing feedback, the climate distribution becomes stationary and has finite predictability, with maximal skill parameters of order 0.5.

## Commentary

### In short

A theoretical paper that treats the atmosphere's rapid weather as random forcing on the slowly responding ocean, ice and land, and shows that this produces the slow variability seen in climate records.

### Response

The model rests on a division of the climate system into a fast part (weather) and slow parts (ocean, ice, vegetation) (S, D). The slow components integrate the fast ones' forcing, and the stabilizing feedback decides whether variance is bounded (R). Caveats: the partition is a modeling choice grounded in timescale separation, not a claim about what a part or whole is, and the paper does not discuss perspectives. The fit to DSRP is therefore partial and mostly structural.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R

Formal proof or model

**Added** 2026-10-17

**How to cite this** Hasselmann, Klaus (1976). Stochastic climate models: Part I. Theory. Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography.