Our climate models are inadequate...

Here's a news release about a new program that tries to plug some of the holes in our understanding of climate....but, look at how much we still don't know!

"Our research should produce a better understanding of the southeast Pacific Ocean system and improve our global computer climate models, which would lead to more confidence in climate forecasts, including predictions about global warming," said UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences C. Roberto Mechoso, who chairs the program, known as VOCALS (VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study). "Models currently used for climate change studies have systematic errors concerning the southeastern Pacific Ocean, and because the models are not accurate for such an extensive area, the El Niños they produce in the Pacific are questionable as well. We hope our research will get rid of, or at least greatly decrease, these uncertainties."

Variations in the southeast Pacific climate affect rainfall and temperature worldwide, directly or indirectly, Mechoso believes, but how the system works is not well understood and therefore cannot be modeled or predicted accurately.

"Despite its great importance to the Earth's climate system, the ocean-cloud-atmosphere-land system in the southeast Pacific has been sparsely observed," Mechoso said. "With VOCALS, that will change drastically."

"We may also produce a better understanding of the dynamics of El Niño. The relation between the eastern Pacific and El Niño is strong. El Niño develops in the eastern Pacific, so when the eastern Pacific is not well represented in climate models, El Niño is not well represented in the models either."

Let me get this straight. Current models have 'systematic errors, and they can't adjust for El Ninos....and we know little about the 'ocean-cloud-atmosphere-land-system in the southeast pacific'....OK..I'm starting to get it....