Page:Lawhead columbia 0054D 12326.pdf/196

 most challenging (and important) tasks in contemporary climate modeling.

The presence of so many interacting feedback mechanisms is one of the features that makes climatology such a difficulty science to get right. It is also characteristic of complex systems more generally. How are we to account for these features when building high-level models of the global climate? What novel challenges emerge from models designed to predict the behavior of systems like this? In Chapter Six, we shall examine Coupled General Circulation Models (CGCMs), which are built to deal with these problems. 186