The accuracy of any future prediction is limited to the completeness of the current understanding, which is based on empirical measurements. You may sense hot and cold but until the invention of the thermometer you could not quantify temperature. The same with the hydrometer for relative humidity, barometer for atmospheric pressure and anemometer for wind speed. As these instruments gained wider distribution there was an ever-increasing database to establish trend lines.
, written in 1941 is considered to be the origins of this branch of science. Based solely on its predictive powers, this is far from perfected science. Realizing that less than a century of measurements from very limited regions of the Earth might be limiting their accuracy, a new branch was added called Paleoclimatology. There has been exponential growth in information on these new branches of science in the last few decades.
It is not internecine snobbery to mention the shortcomings of these new branches of science. Engineers had no method of calculating multi-bay, multi-story structural loads until the 1920’s and could not do three-dimensional analysis until the dawn of the computer age. It was the 1980’s before there were accurate calculation methods for seismic loads. We have all benefited from this information super highway.