by Editorial team · Published February 26, 2020
Understanding past, present and future climate and combining this knowledge with climate models helps to determine natural as well as man-made influences on the climate system of the past and the future (also see“How...
by Editorial team · Published February 26, 2020
As computational power is limited, there is a lower limit to the grid cell size for which climate models can be calculated (see also “What is a climate model?”). However, there are processes at...
by Editorial team · Published February 26, 2020
Modern climate models can generally be considered reliable tools for predicting climate. A recent study (Hausfather et al., 2020) evaluated the performance of various climate models published between the early 1970s and the late...
by Editorial team · Published February 26, 2020
Climate models are tested by comparison of model predictions with real-world observations. For this purpose, climate models are run over a historical period, from around 1850 to near-present, using best estimates for the past...
by Editorial team · Published February 26, 2020
The main inputs for a climate model are external factors, so called “forcings”, that change the amount of the sun’s energy absorbed by the Earth or trapped in the atmosphere. Examples of these forcings...
by Editorial team · Published February 26, 2020
Global climate models or General Circulation models (GCMs) are the most complex and precise models for understanding climate systems and predicting climate change. These models aim to mathematically describe the Earth’s climate system based...
