The ability of scientists to provide models of the atmosphere’s complex responses to changing conditions, like seasonal and daily cycles or different planetary conjunctions, have become ever more accurate.
A. The ability of scientists to provide models of the atmosphere’s complex responses to changing conditions, like seasonal and daily cycles or different planetary conjunctions, have become ever more accurate.
B. The ability of scientists has become ever more accurate in providing models of the atmosphere’s complex responses to changing conditions, such as seasonal and daily cycles or different planetary conjunctions.
C. Scientists have become able to provide ever more accurate models of the atmosphere’s complex responses to such changing conditions as seasonal and daily cycles or different planetary conjunctions.
D. Scientists have become ever more accurate in their ability for providing models of the atmosphere’s complex responses to changing conditions, like seasonal and daily cycles or different planetary conjunctions.
E. Scientists’ ability to provide models of the atmosphere’s complex responses to such changing conditions as seasonal and daily cycles or different planetary conjunctions have become ever more accurate.


Confusion regarding choice C

Do we say

X's ability in doing something

or
X's abilty to do something


I felt C is awkward.... Scientists have become able to provide ever


Please help
Thanks
Sputnik

We prefer such as and not like. Like is used for comparing nouns
A- Eliminate - like
B- ability of scientist is not the one which became accurate. Eliminate B
C. - Sounds logical to other answer choices
D. Eliminate - like
E. - Scientist ability is not become accurate. It is models that is accurate

you're not parsing it correctly: 'ever more accurate' is an indivisible phrase here. 'ever more accurate' is roughly equivalent to 'getting more and more accurate all the time'.

once you make that realization, the right answer should make more sense.

Hi Ron,

Doesn't C change the meaning ...

A - says ability has become more accurate ??
B - more accurate models ??

I believe that "able" is an adjective, and so it has to modify a noun.
Usually an adjective is placed right before or after the noun that it tries to modify.
"able" in C seems weird to me because it is trying to modify (I believe) "the scientists".
Is "able" a special adjective that is allowed to have such flexibility?
If not, could you share some other examples?
Thanks in advance.

well, sure, but remember that you're allowed to change the meaning of a sentence if the original "meaning" doesn't make any sense, as is the case here.

an ability can't be "accurate", because an ability is not something that can be compared quantitatively to a "true" or "target" mark of some sort. by contrast, models (which can approximate true quantitative phenomena), shots at a target (which can come close to the center of the target), and so on can be "accurate".

so yes, (c) changes the meaning, i guess, but it's a desirable change of meaning - because it takes the sentence from a nonsense phrasing to a phrasing that actually makes sense.

nothing special here; all adjectives can do this.
specifically, any adjective can be separated from the noun it's trying to describe by verbs of equivalence ("copulative verbs"), such as be, become, seem, look, and so on.

for instance:
that food looks hot.
this bar seems crowded.
here, "hot" and "crowded" are adjectives, describing, respectively, "food" and "bar", but these two sentences are clearly ok.
same sort of deal with choice (c).