While we cannot be certain what will happen in the future, we have already begun to see changes in climate pattern. These changes will force the world to look at how we build infrastructure as well as community resilience to these issues. Uncertainty will play an important role in how decisions around these issues are made. It will cause people who are forming these decisions to be more creative as well as adaptive to many of these issues. It can be argued that adaptation and forming adaptive practices needs to be a part of these developmental plans. [1] Creating adaptive communities can help explain that while we may not know what is happening, community resilience is strong and therefor able to react.
In some capacities climate models can be helpful, in others they are extremely complicated and they cannot give a clear answer as to which direction a climate is going in. Climate models are able to give us understanding of large scale issues on a smaller geographic scale, yet with that some aspects and specifics of climate models will be lost. Climate models have uncertainties because they provide people with what the current climate is and with predictions for what the future climate could be. These complex models combine aspects of atmosphere, the water cycle, terrestrial processes and more in order to recreate the climate of a given area. Because all of these things can change, predictions can be complicated and varying.
Climate models can be used to help inform the decision making process around how to adapt to climate changes. They demonstrate that because of varying human factors, the climate will change in the future in given areas. They demonstrate that while we may not know what will exactly happen the changes of something happening are very significant.
Some models that were created in the past 50 years have been correct. An example of this is that these previous models showed that there will be melting in the arctic region and that is what we currently have going on.
The limitations to using a climate model lies in its uncertainties. The limitation is that it is not able to give us direct answers to questions. If we adapt because we think there is a high chance that there will be increased precipitation but then it turns out that that region will actually witness a drought, it could cause complications. There are also limitations to how much they can tell us. While climate models can be extremely complicated it is not possible for them to factor every aspect of a geographical region. Although there are limitations, climate models are some of the best resources that we have available to us. There is not time to wait for these predictions to be true or not the most success we can have is creating communities that are able to adapt and be resilient to these changes.
Additional Sources
Randall, D.A., R.A. Wood, S. Bony, R. Colman, T. Fichefet, J. Fyfe, V. Kattsov, A. Pitman, J. Shukla, J. Srinivasan, R.J. Stouffer, A. Sumi and K.E. Taylor, 2007: Climate Models and Their Evaluation. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
RUBENSTEIN, Madeline. “A Beginner’s Guide to Climate Models.” State of the Planet A Beginners Guide to Climate Models Comments, Columbia University, blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/08/26/a-beginners-guide-to-climate-models/.
Beck, Coby. “‘Climate Models Are Unproven’–Actually, GCM’s Have Many Confirmed Successes under Their Belts.” Grist, 19 Jan. 2012, grist.org/article/climate-models-are-unproven/.
[1] Zambrano-Barragán, Carolina. Decision Making and Climate Change Uncertainty: Setting the Foundations for Informed and Consistent Strategic Decisions. World Resource Report, www.bing.com/cr?IG=B1C8B497E0D14226B5FAA5FA48279D95&CID=14D38B730749667922158070064F675F&rd=1&h=e69WBbeY4hZic2z_pYdFWhcUj-jANOHsVxkrbcVWOiE&v=1&r=https%3a%2f%2fwww.wri.org%2four-work%2fproject%2fworld-resources-report%2fdecision-making-and-climate-change-uncertainty-setting&p=DevEx,5063.1.