Climate experts tell us our planet will get warmer and sea levels will rise, and extreme weather will occur more often and with greater intensity. They predict that some places will get wetter and others more arid, that ice will melt and currents shift.
But how can they be sure of these predictions?
A recent book, Demystifying Climate Models, explains in lay-person language how scientists use numerical models to project present and future climate trends. Authors Andrew Gettelman and Richard Rood outline in their book how Earth’s climate works—and how it can be simulated using hard facts, the laws of physics, and mathematical equations.
They concede there’s some uncertainty in climate models, but point out that the basic mechanics of climate change have been known for centuries. The last critical piece—awareness that carbon dioxide warms Earth’s atmosphere—was put in place more than a hundred years ago.
We don’t know exactly how much CO2 humans will emit in years to come, and that matters most in pinpointing precisely what our climate will be like. Still, such predictions are largely based on long-term weather statistics, chemistry, and the thermodynamics of the atmosphere—things that are fairly well understood.
As these two authors argue, model-based projections about climate change are being made with increasing accuracy.
Demystifying Climate Models is an open-access book and can be downloaded free at ResearchGate.
