Projections
Projections are used in the TAR as a guide to the possible future effects of climate change, e.g., changes in global mean temperature and sea level. In the TAR, the word "projection" is favoured over "prediction". This is because many future changes related to climate are highly uncertain. For example, climate change projections are affected by highly uncertain changes in future GHG emissions.
The TAR projects impacts according to possible future changes in global mean temperature. Other projections are based on scenarios that the IPCC has developed. In 2000, the IPCC published 40 different scenarios (the "SRES" scenarios) which contain estimates of future changes in anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols. The SRES scenarios project a wide range of possible changes in future social and economic development, and projected climate change impacts vary according to the scenario considered. The IPCC has not assigned probabilities to the 40 SRES scenarios. Some authors have argued that some SRES scenarios are more likely to occur than others.
Read more about this topic: IPCC Third Assessment Report
Famous quotes containing the word projections:
“Predictions of the future are never anything but projections of present automatic processes and procedures, that is, of occurrences that are likely to come to pass if men do not act and if nothing unexpected happens; every action, for better or worse, and every accident necessarily destroys the whole pattern in whose frame the prediction moves and where it finds its evidence.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“Western man represents himself, on the political or psychological stage, in a spectacular world-theater. Our personality is innately cinematic, light-charged projections flickering on the screen of Western consciousness.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)