We've gotten much better at predicting weather a few days out[0], because not only has our understanding of the Earth's climate improved by leaps and bounds, bu

We've gotten much better at predicting weather a few days out[0], because not only has our understanding of the Earth's climate improved by leaps and bounds, but we've also had the chance to iterate thousands of times over the last couple decades to see how well our models perform and adjust them based on that evidence. On the other hand, we've only had the chance to iterate a few times over the last couple decades in predicting longer-term trends several years out, and even though our understanding has increased here as well, we don't have the benefit of very many results to confirm if that understanding is anywhere near enough to predict well over these sorts of time spans. Apparently arctic sea ice has decreased faster than predicted, but average global temperatures are falling out of the "95%" ranges of most of the models of a decade or two ago[1] [0]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/the-weatherman-is-not-a-moron.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/the-weatherman-is... [1]http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446...