The Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment working group of the multi-nation Arctic Council has produced and published Underwater Noise in the Arctic, a State of Knowledge Report. On page 39, this Arctic Council report criticizes the accuracy of certain “modeling studies” of the effects of underwater noise on marine animals:

“Modeling studies allow for examination of potential noise levels and impacts on animals in regions where direct empirical measurements are difficult to obtain. Modeling studies can also be used to forecast future impacts that have not occurred yet. Challenges associated with modeling studies in the Arctic, especially for all of the studies reported here, is that there has been almost no ground-truthing, so the precision and accuracy of the results are unknown.”

This Arctic Council Report appears to be assuming a quality standard requiring validation of computer model results by comparing them (“ground-truthing”) to observed data of known accuracy.

This Report is available here.