Beyond Global Warming

"Climate models are some of our most powerful tools for exploring human-induced global warming. These models, derived from numerical weather prediction models, are based upon the fundamental laws of physics. Using powerful computers, they can act as virtual laboratories for studying the structure and behavior of the atmosphere-ocean-land system. As our climate models get more and more sophisticated, they allow us to not only better predict climate change, but also to learn more about the physical mechanisms involved in climate, which remain difficult to isolate without the help of computers.…