Introduction A climate model is like a recipe for showing how climate works.
Models describe the balance between sunlight reaching Earth and heat escaping back into space.
Heat trapped in the atmosphere warms the Earth. Carbon Dioxide Carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas, is now at its highest level of the past 160,000 years. During this period, when carbon dioxide has increased so has global temperature. This pattern helps confirm climate models and global warming predictions. Temperature Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere.