The ultimate test of our understanding of the working of the climate system is how well our models simulate the behavior of the climate system. Our efforts in helping to build better and better models are currently focused on diagnosing the causes of outstanding biases in the state-of-the-art climate models--Coupled General Circulation Models (CGCMs) (or Climate System Models). We are currently working with modelers at NCAR, GFDL, NASA, and IAP attempting to understand the causes of outstanding tropical biases in CGCMs: the excessive cold-tongue, the double ITCZ, etc. As few processes are not coupled, key to diagnosing the causes of biases in climate simulations by CGCMs is to evaluate the various feedbacks in the models and understand the climatic roles of feedbacks. A precise knowledge of the major feedbacks in the climate system, such as the feedbacks of water vapor and clouds, is also necessary for understanding the causes of the observed climate change and for predicting future climate.

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