Climate Models Drive Accurate Long-Term Earth Projections

Climate scientists explain how climate models running on petaflop supercomputers simulate Earth by solving physical equations on 3D grids, using ensembles to manage chaos and produce robust projections. Dozens of international models coordinated through CMIP and centers like NCAR inform policies and infrastructure decisions—such as flood elevation and power-grid resilience—by projecting outcomes under scenarios including varying greenhouse gas emissions and volcanic forcing.