Studies of Climate Change with Statistical-Dynamical Models: A Review

Abstract

The cause-effect relationship is not always possible to trace in GCMs because of the simultaneous inclusion of several highly complex physical processes. Furthermore, the inter-GCM differences are large and there is no simple way to reconcile them. So, simple climate models, like statistical-dynamical models (SDMs), appear to be useful in this context. This kind of models is essentially mechanistic, being directed towards understanding the dependence of a particular mechanism on the other parameters of the problem. In this paper, the utility of SDMs for studies of climate change is discussed in some detail. We show that these models are an indispensable part of hierarchy of climate models.