How do scientists figure out how climate will change?
How can scientists predict the effects of long-term climate change, when predicting daily weather is still a difficult task? Local variability is what makes weather forecasting seem imperfect: such site-specific and detailed forecasts are not even attempted by climate change models.
There are two main means of predicting possible climate change: one involves working out analogues from past climatic and hydrometric records; the other, much more commonly used, uses mathematical simulations of climate (on computer programs) known as general circulation models or global climate models (GCMs).
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