Atmospheric model

An atmospheric model is like a pretend world that scientists create on their computers to try and understand how our Earth's atmosphere works.

Imagine you have a big toy globe, like the one you might have in your classroom. Now, imagine you can split that globe into a bunch of small pieces and you can look at each piece separately. That's kind of like what an atmospheric model does - it looks at the atmosphere in tiny, tiny pieces, called grid cells.

Scientists use lots of math and science to figure out what's happening in each of these grid cells. They look at things like temperature, pressure, humidity, wind, and the way gases like carbon dioxide move around.

Now, let's pretend we're playing house. When we play house, we might pretend that we're a mom or a dad, and we might pretend we're cooking dinner or doing laundry. In the same way, scientists use their atmospheric model to pretend that they're the Earth's atmosphere. They use the model to try and predict what the Earth's atmosphere might do in different situations. For example, they might try to predict how the Earth's atmosphere will change if we keep releasing lots of carbon dioxide into the air.

Overall, scientists use atmospheric models to help them understand the Earth's atmosphere better, and to try and figure out what might happen in the future.