Climate Change Impacts, Tipping Points, and the Evidence for Urgency

The climate is dynamic and complex, affected by processes happening at the scale of a cloud droplet to the size of the planet. Large changes in climate are recorded in ice cores, ocean mud and, over the last two centuries, instrumental records. But can we understand the large scale patterns in climate and their changes? Can we distinguish the impacts of individual drivers of change, such as volcanoes, the sun, or disruption of the natural carbon budget due to human activities? Moreover, can we make skillful predictions for the future beyond the 5 day weather forecast? Each of these tasks has been made possible by the use of climate models, and yet, understanding of their role is often misunderstood or distorted. I will discuss how models are not only useful, but increasingly necessary for understanding how climate changes and its impacts, especially when the climate changes rapidly