science > What might happen?
Projections
Our climate impacts us greatly: our food production, our water availability, our economy, our health, and in many other important ways. So, adapting to a changing climate is a necessity. Climate models provide us with the means to make projections about how the climate could look in the future.
Climate Models
Global Climate Models (GCMs - also known as general circulation models) are the tools that scientists employ to predict what the future climate will look like. GCMs are complex computer programs that make projections by relating multiple variables, processes and their interactions in order to simulate what the resulting climate outcome could be.
There is a large array of processes and variables that affect our climate system. Modern climate models account for a large number of these key elements and do a good job in providing us with a snapshot of the future climate.
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are an important driver of global warming, and humans are contributing to the greenhouse gas problem to a large degree. Because anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gas emissions are the result of human activity, and human activity in the future is not very predictable, different emissions scenarios are used to account for the various levels human influence on greenhouse gas concentrations.
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Scenarios
The IPCC developed a system of scenarios that estimate how greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere could change in the future in response to human activities. The scenarios take into account the direct contribution of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, but also consider other human induced factors that influence greenhouse gas concentrations, such as technological advancements and population growth, for example.
In total, there are 40 emissions scenarios, all of which are based on four main storylines (A1, A2, B1 and B2 storylines). Each storyline creates a different kind of world for the future, from how quickly the population grows, to the level of economic development, to the approach taken to environmental issues (global or regional) (1)
