The observation of winds in the atmosphere raised the question of large scale movements of air masses. In the 18^th century, George Hadley, an English lawyer and amateur meteorologist, proposed a tropical atmospheric circulation with warm air rising near the equator, flowing poleward at 10–15 kilometers above the surface and descending in the subtropics (Hadley 1735). This so-called Hadley cell could explain the trade winds. Interest in global circulation phenomena continued, but its systematic study to understand climatic phenomena only began in the 20^th century.

Classical climatology took an opposite approach and attempted to understand climatic phenomena from a local perspective and local investigation (see also Regional/small scale research of climate). When higher layers of the atmosphere became a matter of intensive investigation in the early 20^th century, the climatological buttom-up approach from the local to the global became challenged. Large scale circulation patterns had a tremendous impact on climatic phenomena such as tropical rain belts, subtropical deserts and the monsoon. Climatologists such as Hermann Flohn, who made significant contributions to the understanding of the monsoon, attempted to modernize climatology and integrate local and large scale approaches in climatology (see modernizing climatology).

Climate modeling, in contrast, took from its very beginning a larger scale approach and cannot handle small scale phenomena adequately. Climate models are based on differential equations, which in principle describe the state of the atmosphere at every point in time and space. The solution of these equations, however, required an averaging of the state of the atmosphere in large grid cells covering the surface of the earth. These grid cells usually have a side length of several hundred kilometers. Smaller scale phenomena such as cloud formation and precipitation, hence, cannot be modeled in a realistic manner. 

With the dissemination of general circulation models (and a raising awareness of global environmental problems) from the 1970s onwards, the attention increasingly moved away from local and regional detail to the global character of climate. A typical example of this globalization is the construction of the artificial parameter “global mean temperature” by James E. Hansen and others as a lead parameter to assess global climate change (see climate projections). Coarse grid resolution and simplifications in climate models, on the other hand, reinforced a reductionist approach blurring regional and local characteristics (such as local topography etc.).

Sources:

Hadley, George: "Concerning the Cause of the General Trade-Winds", Philosophical Transactions 39, pp. 58-62.

Randall, D. et al. 2003. Breaking the Cloud Parameterization Deadlock, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 84, pp. 1547-1564.