How do scientists predict future climate?
Basic physics tells us that greenhouse gases trap Earth’s heat and cause warming. But Earth’s climate is very complex, involving interactions among the air, land and oceans. That’s why scientists use computer models to project the effects of global warming. Though the models are far from exact, they do a reasonable job of simulating our current climate and reproducing known changes from past climates. Scientists are confident about the models’ abilities to simulate large-scale effects of global warming, such as global temperature increase and average sea level rise. The models are less reliable when it comes to simulating changes in other weather variables such as changes in rainfall. Also, current models are still ill-equipped to predict with any confidence what will happen in local areas.
