One of the problems that has plagued climate model research is that climate models that track enough variables to approach usefulness use huge amounts of computing cycles, enough to overload super-computers. These models have to be run thousands of times with variations. Another problem is that there are different models that reach different conclusions. If they had enough computing power to run many models, repeatedly, then climate modeling science could advance more quickly.

We want you to run a climate model as a background process on your computer (similar to the successful SETI@home project). It should not affect any other tasks you use your computer for. If you choose to download the model, you will be supplied with your own, unique, version of the model. As the model runs, you can watch the weather patterns over the globe evolve. The results are sent back via the internet, and we are developing an interactive portal to allow you to compare your results with other people's as the experiment progresses. The Open University will be offering a short course based on the project, and there will also be opportunities to get schools involved with the project.

UPDATE: An NSU article about climateprediction.net

UPDATE2: A New Scientist article about climateprediction.net which includes some quotes from researchers and links to other interesting stuff.