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The recently acquired capability of mankind to change our environment is posing unprecedented issues for complexity and outreach. Climate change is also strongly science-based. The base for this debate is rooted in sophisticated scientific arguments derived by using advanced numerical methods and techniques. This fact poses a special responsibility on the climate scientific community: we have to respond to society demands for information that has to be accurate, honest and timely. We can easily convince ourselves of the extreme complexity of the climate system, a system that contains unknown or poorly known processes, strong nonlinear interactions that enhance sensitivity to small perturbation. How is it possible a quantitative scientific consideration of such a system? This is the great challenge that climate science is facing today, to obtain a scientific method that will produce assessments that will be reliable, consistent and quantitative. The numerical approach to climate will be presented with a review of recent results and a critical assessment of its potential and limitations.
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