by Climate models are complex, just like the world that reflect them. At the same time, they simulate the interacting, chaotic flow of the earth’s atmosphere and the oceans and they run on the largest supercomputers in the world.
Critics of climate science, such as the report of the Energy Ministry in 2025, often refer to this complexity to argue that these models are too insecure to help us understand today’s warming or to tell us something useful about the future.
But the history of climate science tells a different story.
The earliest climate models made specific forecasts about global warming for decades before these forecasts. And when the observations occurred, the models were correct. The forecasts were not only predictions for global average warming – they also forecast geographic heating patterns that we see today.
These early predictions began in the 1960s largely from a single, somewhat dark government laboratory outside of Princeton, New Jersey: the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. And many of the discoveries carry the fingerprints of a particularly forward -looking and persistent climate model Syukuro Manabe, who was awarded the Nobel Prize of 2021 for his work.
Manabe’s models based in the physics of the atmosphere and the ocean predict the world that we are now seeing and at the same time draw a blueprint for today’s climate models and its ability to simulate our large climate. While models have restrictions, it is this success story of the success that gives us confidence in the interpretation of the changes that we now see, as well as the prediction of the upcoming changes.
Prediction No. 1: Global warming from CO2
Manabe’s first task in the 1960s in the US weather office in a laboratory that would become the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory was to model the greenhouse effect exactly how greenhouse gases catch the radiation heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Since the oceans would freeze without the greenhouse effect, this was an important first step to build up any kind of credible climate model.
To test his calculations, Manabe created a very simple climate model. It represented the global atmosphere as a single air column and comprised key components of the climate, such as an incoming sunlight, convection of thunderstorms and its greenhouse effect model.
Despite its simplicity, the model reproduced the overall climate of the earth quite well. In addition, it was shown that the doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere would lead to the planet warm by about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius).
This estimate of the earth reliability published in 1967 has remained essentially unchanged in the many decades since then and captures the total size of the observed global warming. At the moment, the world is about halfway to double the atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the global temperature has heated up by 1.2 ° C – directly in the Ballpark of what was predicted.
Other greenhouses such as methane and the delayed reaction of the ocean to global warming also also influence the temperature increase, but the general conclusion is unchanged: Manabe has preserved the earth’s sensitivity to the earth in relation to law.
Prediction No. 2: Stratosphere cooling
The surface and the lower atmosphere in Manabes split model heated up as carbon dioxide concentrations, but in a surprising surprise, the stratosphere of the model actually cooled down.
The temperatures in this upper region of the atmosphere between around 7.5 and 31 miles (12 and 50 km) are determined by a sensitive balance between the absorption of the ultraviolet sunlight by ozone and the release of radiation heat by carbon dioxide. Increase the carbon dioxide and the atmosphere caps more radiant warmth near the surface, but actually releases more radiant heat from the stratosphere, which cools down.
This cooling of the stratosphere has been detected by satellite measurements for decades and is a characteristic fingerprint of carbon dioxide-driven warming, since the heating of other causes such as changes in sunlight or el niño cycles do not result in stratospheric cooling.
Forecast No. 3: Arctic amplification
Manabe used its gap model as the basis for a prototypical quasi-global model that only simulated a fraction of the world. It only simulated the upper 100 meters of the ocean and neglected the effects of sea currents.
In 1975 manabe published global heating simulations with this quasi-global model and once again found stratospheric cooling. But he also made a new discovery – that the Arctic heats up considerably more than the rest of the world by a factor of two to three times.
This “arctic amplification” proves to be a robust feature of global warming, which occurs in today’s observations and subsequent simulations. A warming Arctic also means a decline in the Arctic sea ice, which has become one of the most visible and dramatic indicators for a changing climate.
Prediction No. 4: Land-Ozean contrast
In the early 1970s, Manabe also worked to pair its atmospheric model into a unique dynamic model of the oceanographer Kirk Bryan.
Around 1990, manabe and Bryan used this coupled atmospheric-Ocean model to simulate global warming through realistic continental geography, including the effects of the full ocean rice. This led to a number of knowledge, including the observation that country generally heats more than the ocean, around 1.5.
As with the Arctic amplification, this land-Ocean contrast can be observed in the observed warming. It can also be explained from basic scientific principles and roughly corresponds to the way a dry surface, such as. B. pavement, more than a moist surface like soil on a hot, sunny day.
The contrast has consequences for country residents like us, since every global warming is reinforced through land.
Prediction No. 5: Delayed Warming of the Southern Ocean
Perhaps the biggest surprise of Manabes Models came from a region that most of us rarely think: the southern ocean.
This huge, remote waters surrounds the Antarctic and has strong Winn to the east that unimpediated, due to the lack of land masses in the southern Midlettitudes. These winds constantly pull deep water water onto the surface.
Manabe and colleagues found that the southern ocean had heated up very slowly when the concentrations of the atmospheric carbon dioxide increased, since the surface waters were constantly filled up by these aspiring abyss, which were not yet heated.
This delayed warming of the ocean is also visible in the temperature observations.
What brings all of this?
If you look back on Manabe’s work more than half a century later, it is clear that even early climate models have recorded the broad lines of global warming.
Manabe models simulated these patterns before their observation: the arctic amplification was simulated in 1975, but was only observed in 2009 with confidence, while the stratospheric cooling was simulated in 1967, but was only recently observed.
Climate models naturally have their limits. For example, you cannot predict regional climate change. But the fact that climate science has significant unknown people as in every area should not be for us for what we know.
This article will be released from the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and trustworthy analyzes to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: Nadir Jevanjee, National Oceanian and atmospheric administration
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Nadir Jevanjee works for the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory from Noaa, which is discussed in this article. The views expressed here are in no way official positions of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the Department of Commerce.
