An Essay on Climate Dynamics

Abstract

Following a general survey of the evidence for climatic variation, the dynamical basis of climate and the modeling of climatic change are briefly reviewed. The ability of general circulation models and of climate models employing a greater degree of averaging or statistical representation to simulate climatic changes is limited by our incomplete knowledge of the physical system and by the models' computational demands. Future research in climate dynamics is seen to involve a mixture of modeling approaches in an expanded program of experimentation and analysis.