Change / Models

I found a website titled Models Underestimate Global Warming Impacts on this site. When they say model they mean more of not a physical model but their modeled numbers and computer designs, but nonetheless I will be able to answer the question Why is it necessary to use models? The subtitle states, "research finds the effects of warming racking up faster than scientists had predicted." The article goes on to talk about past miscalculations/underestimates. "It used to be that climate scientists worried about how to make the public care about changes that might not happen for a century. Today they have a bigger problem: some of the changes aren’t waiting around that long....new research shows that models in the report underestimate some changes that are already under way. Sea ice is melting and sea level is rising faster than models had predicted, and one brake on warming, the uptake of CO2 by oceans, appears not to be working as well as scientists had thought."

Models are necessary to use for many reasons. In this case I find the main to be that through accurate models we are able to predict what will happen (in our physical world) today. In the example above the opposite happened. Since their models were underestimating reality today they did not do a very good job of predicting what was going to happen. They did not think that sea ice would be melting or sea level to be rising this much faster than their models predicted.