re: #320 Joetheplumber

Global climate is a result of the complex interactions between the atmosphere, cryosphere (ice), hydrosphere (oceans), lithosphere (land), and biosphere (life), fueled by the nonuniform spatial distribution of incoming solar radiation.

Joetheplumber is quoting of the first sentence of a 2001 PNAS paper, Global climate models: Past, present, and future. The article goes on to say

Major progress in our understanding of climate processes in the past, present, and future has been made by the development of numerical models that simulate climate at an increasing level of detail. Recent breakthroughs in spatial coverage and temporal resolutions of systems recording today’s climate and high resolution reconstructions of past climate conditions from diverse archives using new proxies make it possible to validate climate models and thus improve their reliability for future
predictions.