This article uses flash animations to illustrate ideas. You'll need the free flash player to view these . If you're on a modem connection they may take a little time to load, please be patient.
What do recent climate prediction experiments tell us about our likely climate in the future? The map below shows predictions for how the climate might vary over the next century in various regions of the world, given two particular scenarios for how the world might develop, and how much fossil fuel it might burn.
You can click on the regions highlighted in blue to show the prediction for the years 2050 and 2100 in that region. You can also see how the predictions are affected by basing their forecasts on a future with lower emissions.
The results are different for each region. In some areas, we can be more certain about what will happen - the horizontal spread of the 90% region is narrower. Also notice that, while we can be more confident about what will happen by 2050, the most likely temperature rise by 2100 is greater than in 2050. By 2100, the temperature will probably have increased dramatically.
But what about extreme events? How will the likelihood of an extreme event change as the climate warms? It is never possible to attribute one particular event to a particular cause. To go back to the dice example, you could load a die so that sixes occur twice as often as normal. But if you were to throw a six using this die, you could not blame it specifically on the fact that the dice had been loaded. Half of the sixes would have occurred anyway, even with a normal die. Loading the die just doubles the odds of throwing a 6.
< previous next > Page 8 of 9
Content last updated: 13/12/2005
About our expert
Sylvia Knight - a climate scientist - works with the climateprediction.net project, which is trying to produce the most complete forecast of 21st century climate ever attempted. She is responsible for communicating the aims and results of the experiments to as wide an audience as possible.
Sylvia has a degree in Natural Sciences and a PhD in Meteorology, and is co-author of the Open University short course Weather and Climate Modelling.
