The complexity of Atmospheric and Climate Models: Assumptions and Feedbacks

While it is true that the physical principles and equations discussed in part one do form the “core” of any atmospheric or climate model, there are processes in the observed system that are difficult to represent due to our incomplete understanding of the process, or the fact that some processes are not exact. Many of these processes are what we call “feedbacks”. Feedbacks are manifestations of “non-linearity” in our equations, and this will be described in more detail below (see Fig. 1). Feedbacks also quite often represent the interaction between two parts of the climate system.