Predicting the Future by Using the Past

What’s the best way to figure out the future of the climate? According to research conducted by Arts and Sciences Earth Sciences professor Linda Ivany, it’s all about turning to the past.

“If we can reproduce ancient past climates where we know what happened, that tells us that those models are a really good tool for us to know what’s going to happen in the future,” she told the Smithsonian Magazine. “The better the models get at recovering the past, the better they’re going to be at predicting the future.”