<p>Climate is not weather, and modeling the climate is not like modeling the weather, <a href="https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/20/what-are-the-major-differences-between-weather-models-and-climate-models">What are the major differences between weather models and climate models?</a>. In the same way modeling the movement of a single animal over its lifetime at a meter scale is very different than measuring and predicting population change over several generations. Or how trying to predict the erosion of a beach is much easier than trying to predict the movement of a single sand grain. </p>

<p>A climate model is in many ways a much simpler system to model because you are not trying to predict individual local wind patterns or exact local evaporation. As the linked answer puts it, "a weather model cares where a hurricane is, and when/where it will impact land, whereas a climate model may only care the average number of hurricanes per year and not about where the details of those storms)." Scale is a big factor and many thing become easier to predict at a wider scale. At the same time a climate model incorporate many more factors, many thing in weather models are simply left out since they don't change or are not a factor at the scale of the model, even important things like the fact the earth is a round and soils release gases. </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-22T14:59:48.840Z
2019-12-22T15:06:30.183Z
2019-12-22T15:06:30.183Z
John
<p>Climate science seems to be as relevant as other types of science. It's just that it has been organized ridiculed after the formation of IPCC in the 80's. It has a lot of heritage from physics and there are a lot of signs of a climate emergency.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/CLy3b.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/CLy3b.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/pBQt0.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/pBQt0.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>Your question is not fully clear. Some effects are impossible to predict in detail while other is not. Down a prediction of the global temperature and the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ made by ExxonMobile's researcher 1980.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/juJLi.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/juJLi.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-19T20:57:33.590Z
2019-12-20T13:20:22.683Z
2019-12-20T13:20:22.683Z
Lehs
<p>I don't know much about the topic of climate change to be honest. However, I've been attending a number of talks recently on the topic. As someone who studies mathematical models and uncertainty quantification, one thing that I do know is that weather models are extremely complicated and very sensitive to time. The error in weather model accumulated very fast, which makes long term behaviors fuzzy or uncertain. My knowledge is not related to the study on climate much, so that is about all I know.</p>

<p>I read up a bit on the climate issue and understand that the data suggests that climate change is real. I look at the data (from Nasa website) and agree that it supports that claim. </p>

<p>So my question is not about whether climate change is real or not. <strong>My question is how some scientists make claims like "in 50 years..."</strong> My guess is that they observe the trends in history and use that as the basis for their prediction. I hope this question is clear. If you have an understanding on the topic, please point me to the right source.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-29T16:14:06.420Z
@BarryCarter you might want to take a look here https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9912-timeline-climate-change/ please take a look at the year 2003.(during my lifetime i have never experienced a single year with lower than normal global temparature,i was born in 1965)
trond hansen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-29T17:01:22.457Z
@BarryCarter one uses tree rings to find the temparature,ice cores to see the composition of the atmosphere,and sediment cores to see how the composition of life have changed(pollen and algae/plankton).it is possible to find how the climate have changed over the last thousands of years by combining the findings from the data sets.
trond hansen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-29T17:28:23.843Z
Weather is not climate.  While it's difficult, if not impossible, to predict weather more than a few days ahead,  climate is the average of weather.  If you think in terms of chaos theory, climate is the attractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor of weather.  So it's possible to say, for instance, that warming temperatures will on average cause more & stronger hurricanes, but it's not possible to predict the paths those hurricanes will take more than a few days in advance.
jamesqf
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-29T18:45:17.513Z
@jamesqf My wording for the original question shows my lack of understanding of the topic. I did not draw a line between climate and weather. However, my question is mainly how scientists predict the effect of climate change/weather far ahead. I have seen some claims of certain effects would happen within a certain timeline. I think you made a good point about the effect of climate being some sort of average. If so, then perhaps more uncertainty quantification could be carried out for those predictions.
Paichu
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-29T20:02:17.063Z
Possible duplicate of https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/20/what-are-the-major-differences-between-weather-models-and-climate-models   , also a good good and short read: https://www.climas.arizona.edu/blog/climate-models-versus-weather-models-different-approaches-different-needs
AtmosphericPrisonEscape
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-29T21:27:53.327Z
@AtmosphericPrisonEscape Thank you. Although it is not quite the answer to my question. The discussion and the article are very interesting.
Paichu
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-30T12:59:47.107Z
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology
trond hansen
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-09-30T19:00:58.550Z
Not my area, so I'm not going to try to give an authoritative answer. But my understanding: as you said, climate models are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This is dealt with by running *ensembles* of models with slightly different initial conditions, and then looking at the spread of the outputs of those models.
Semidiurnal Simon
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-22T15:00:19.430Z
I am voting to close this because there is already a question about this with an accepted answer.  [What are the major differences between weather models and climate models?](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/20/what-are-the-major-differences-between-weather-models-and-climate-models) if you are interested in more details about the many forms of modeling there is theis question https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2806/resources-for-learning-the-technical-parts-of-atmospheric-modeling?noredirect=1&lq=1
John
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-12-22T15:04:30.343Z
in fact there are many questions about this, which is why you should search a topic before posting a question.
John
<climate-change><climate><climate-models>
On what basics, can scientists predict the effects of climate change?
Paichu
# On what basics, can scientists predict the effects of climate change?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-09-29)

I don't know much about the topic of climate change to be honest. However, I've been attending a number of talks recently on the topic. As someone who studies mathematical models and uncertainty quantification, one thing that I do know is that weather models are extremely complicated and very sensitive to time. The error in weather model accumulated very fast, which makes long term behaviors fuzzy or uncertain. My knowledge is not related to the study on climate much, so that is about all I know.

I read up a bit on the climate issue and understand that the data suggests that climate change is real. I look at the data (from Nasa website) and agree that it supports that claim.

So my question is not about whether climate change is real or not. **My question is how some scientists make claims like "in 50 years..."** My guess is that they observe the trends in history and use that as the basis for their prediction. I hope this question is clear. If you have an understanding on the topic, please point me to the right source.

**Tags:** climate-change, climate, climate-models

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: @BarryCarter you might want to take a look here https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9912-timeline-climate-change/ please take a look at the year 2003.(during my lifetime i have never experienced a single year with lower than normal global temparature,i was born in 1965)  
> **username_1**: @BarryCarter one uses tree rings to find the temparature,ice cores to see the composition of the atmosphere,and sediment cores to see how the composition of life have changed(pollen and algae/plankton).it is possible to find how the climate have changed over the last thousands of years by combining the findings from the data sets.  
> **username_2**: Weather is not climate.  While it's difficult, if not impossible, to predict weather more than a few days ahead,  climate is the average of weather.  If you think in terms of chaos theory, climate is the attractor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor of weather.  So it's possible to say, for instance, that warming temperatures will on average cause more & stronger hurricanes, but it's not possible to predict the paths those hurricanes will take more than a few days in advance.  
> **username_0**: @username_2 My wording for the original question shows my lack of understanding of the topic. I did not draw a line between climate and weather. However, my question is mainly how scientists predict the effect of climate change/weather far ahead. I have seen some claims of certain effects would happen within a certain timeline. I think you made a good point about the effect of climate being some sort of average. If so, then perhaps more uncertainty quantification could be carried out for those predictions.  
> **username_3**: Possible duplicate of https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/20/what-are-the-major-differences-between-weather-models-and-climate-models   , also a good good and short read: https://www.climas.arizona.edu/blog/climate-models-versus-weather-models-different-approaches-different-needs  
> **username_0**: @username_3 Thank you. Although it is not quite the answer to my question. The discussion and the article are very interesting.  
> **username_1**: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology  
> **username_4**: Not my area, so I'm not going to try to give an authoritative answer. But my understanding: as you said, climate models are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This is dealt with by running *ensembles* of models with slightly different initial conditions, and then looking at the spread of the outputs of those models.  
> **username_5**: I am voting to close this because there is already a question about this with an accepted answer.  [What are the major differences between weather models and climate models?](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/20/what-are-the-major-differences-between-weather-models-and-climate-models) if you are interested in more details about the many forms of modeling there is theis question https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2806/resources-for-learning-the-technical-parts-of-atmospheric-modeling?noredirect=1&lq=1  
> **username_5**: in fact there are many questions about this, which is why you should search a topic before posting a question.  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_5 on 2019-12-22. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

Climate is not weather, and modeling the climate is not like modeling the weather, [What are the major differences between weather models and climate models?](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/20/what-are-the-major-differences-between-weather-models-and-climate-models). In the same way modeling the movement of a single animal over its lifetime at a meter scale is very different than measuring and predicting population change over several generations. Or how trying to predict the erosion of a beach is much easier than trying to predict the movement of a single sand grain.

A climate model is in many ways a much simpler system to model because you are not trying to predict individual local wind patterns or exact local evaporation. As the linked answer puts it, "a weather model cares where a hurricane is, and when/where it will impact land, whereas a climate model may only care the average number of hurricanes per year and not about where the details of those storms)." Scale is a big factor and many thing become easier to predict at a wider scale. At the same time a climate model incorporate many more factors, many thing in weather models are simply left out since they don't change or are not a factor at the scale of the model, even important things like the fact the earth is a round and soils release gases.


---

### Answer by username_6 on 2019-12-19. Score: 2

Climate science seems to be as relevant as other types of science. It's just that it has been organized ridiculed after the formation of IPCC in the 80's. It has a lot of heritage from physics and there are a lot of signs of a climate emergency.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/CLy3b.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/CLy3b.png)

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/pBQt0.jpg)](https://i.sstatic.net/pBQt0.jpg)

Your question is not fully clear. Some effects are impossible to predict in detail while other is not. Down a prediction of the global temperature and the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ made by ExxonMobile's researcher 1980.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/juJLi.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/juJLi.png)


---

