The Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) is a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was published in 2000. The greenhouse gas emissions scenarios described in the Report have been used to make projections of possible future climate change. The SRES scenarios, as they are often called, were used in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), published in 2001, and in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), published in 2007.
The SRES scenarios were designed to improve upon some aspects of the IS92 scenarios, which had been used in the earlier IPCC Second Assessment Report of 1995. The SRES scenarios are "baseline" (or "reference") scenarios, which means that they do not take into account any current or future measures to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).
Emissions projections of the SRES scenarios are broadly comparable in range to the baseline emissions scenarios that have been developed by the scientific community. The SRES scenarios, however, do not encompass the full range of possible futures: emissions may change less than the scenarios imply, or they could change more.
Read more about Special Report On Emissions Scenarios: Purpose, Scenario Families, SRES Scenarios and Climate Change Initiatives, Atmospheric GHG Concentrations, Observed Emissions Rates, Post-SRES Projections
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