evidence: Take, for example, ocean warming. Despite criticisms from climate change skeptics, global climate models have accurately predicted rising average sea surface temperatures, which are extremely important to predicting the intensity of climate change. But observations in recent decades show that changes in sea surface temperatures vary greatly by region. That geographic variation suggests that end of century global warming may be less severe than most climate models suggest. These observations do not invalidate climate modeling, but they do highlight the importance of regular comparisons between climate models and the real-world observations they aspire to reflect. [...] The way that the models are both right and wrong simplifies to a math problem. A numerically infinite number of combinations bring you to the same average value. For example, two is the mean of two and two, but also the mean of one and three. In this way, global climate models are correctly arriving at the mean sea surface temperature warming, but missing the real-life regional variation. But how the ocean warms has enormous implications for global climate sensitivity, or how much the Earth as a whole will warm. [...] While that may be a troubling problem for climate scientists, it means that based on observed Eastern Pacific cooling, the models are very likely overshooting end of century global warming estimates, Battisti and Dong said. Even with an active greenhouse effect, these stronger Eastern Pacific clouds still reflect a non-negligible amount of solar radiation back to space, bringing down overall warming.