The Nansen Legacy uses empirical, conceptual, statistical, or physical models (including hindcasts), or a combination thereof, for the diagnosis of the present Barents environment and prognosis of its future.
A variety of numerical general circulation models (GCMs) are used and improved from the range of weather and sea ice forecast models, to regional ice-ocean hindcast models, to fully coupled earth system models tailored for predicting (seasons to decades) or projecting the future (decades to centuries, including what-if scenarios).