Atmospheric climate, in contrast to weather, is traditionally considered to be determined by boundary conditions such as sea surface temperature (SST). To test this hypothesis, we examined annual mean precipitation from an ensemble of 20 general circulation model (GCM) simulations. Ensemble members were forced with identical 10-year series of SST and sea ice, but they began with slightly differing initial conditions. A surprisingly small proportion of the variance in the output is attributable to the effects of boundary forcing. This result-and similar evidence from smaller ensembles of other GCM simulations-implies that long-term precipitation variations are mostly unpredictable, even if SST forecasts are `perfect.`