Future Climate Scenarios

Future climate change, climate impacts, climate change adaptation and emissions mitigation can be viewed from different perspectives, each with their own characteristics. Here we look at three main perspectives, or different ‘lenses’ that can be used. These are also called ‘dimensions of integration’.

Traditionally, climate change projections have been based on standardised scenarios describing plausible concentrations of future atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. This has been extremely useful for informing our understanding of how the Earth is likely to respond, depending on global efforts to manage greenhouse gas emissions.

However, there are other ways that climate projections can be framed.

Explore this section to discover more about three such framing approaches - or lenses:

1. The traditional greenhouse gas scenarios approach,
2. Using mean global warming levels (such as are referred to in the 'Paris Agreement' targets), and
3. Cumulative global carbon emissions.