[cogitator]

The short answer is, the current state of the models is sufficient to determine Earth's climate state and discern the primary effects of changing climate "drivers" There is still uncertainty in the size of some climate influences and feedbacks, clouds notably being one of the larger uncertainties. For this reason, every model output is always associated with some uncertainty, so that model output will not provide exact replication of events and trends. For example, while coupled-ocean atmosphere models generally reproduce ENSO frequency, they have yet to capture a good reproduction of individual event intensity or actual event timing. But they still characterize the ENSO contribution to global climate over decades well.

[palmer]

I am aware that models don't need to recreate real events, just a reasonable facsimile of them. The problem is that the smaller scale events matter because they effect the larger scale weather. The medium scale vortex that happened here can't exist in any 200 mile climate model. OTOH, ENSO requires no small or medium scale modelling to reproduce accurately. Modelling ENSO relies on large scale inputs like overall reflectivity of clouds, reradiation of enery, etc. Those can be derived from fine weather models, but they are not in the GCM models used to model ENSO.

The lenticular clouds I see outside my window right now are from the MCS and are blocking the sun. Is it ok if we just subsitute the insolation from Richmond instead? I don't think so.