I joined CPDN an hour ago and have basic questions. My computer has already done some work, but the CPU usage on my (MacBook Pro) Activity Monitor shows mostly idle. How can that be? More important, the "Project Stats" has terms like "ice fall sheets" etc. I'd like to know what the project is, why these numbers are being computed, and what they tell me. Is this described anywhere?

Welcome, Compseifert, to the project and the boards.

In the blue stack on left of this page, click on "Main page". This takes you to a page of options, in which you should find answers to most, if not all, of your questions. If not, write again.

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"We have met the enemy and he is us." -- Pogo
Greetings from coastal Washington state, the scenic US Pacific Northwest.

You were quite fortunate to join just at that moment as some new Australia and New Zealand models have been issued, which is the only model type that currently runs on Mac.

You have eight of them.

There is more information about the ANZ experiment here.

Thank you. These links give me what I wanted. I guess they were too prominent for me to notice. One last question: somewhere (couldn't find it again) it said that I can see results in real time, or something to that effect. How does that work? I can't use the screen saver because it interferes with my multiple desktops and displays.

... I can see results in real time ...

There is a link on the World Weather Attribution page to a blog entry on The Carbon Brief, Attributing extreme weather to climate change in real-time.

When the CPDN project started the models took a long time to run (months) and a long time to analyse and covered the whole Earth. It is now possible to run large numbers of shorter models for a region in order to address specific questions, such as flooding in the UK or drought in California or the 2003 heat wave in Europe.

As part of this effort the project staff have not only developed processes to analyse the data for presentation to academic and policy audiences but have also produced charts to show volunteers more immediately the results of their efforts. If you look through the posts by Hannah Rowlands then you'll find some of the charts, starting with UK Flooding.