Climate Change Projections

Question 1

Principle Sources of Uncertainty

Answer 1

• We don’t know how society will change in the future, leading to different possible economic scenarios.
• Climate model predictions of T’ for a given economic scenario aren’t certain due to unknown model errors in Q’, lambda, alpha and c. Because we don’t understand the physical processes well we have limited observations of the past to compare against.

Question 2

Mitigation

Answer 2

Reduce emissions of CO2 and other green house gases so that climate change is not as much of a problem.

Question 3

Adaption

Answer 3

Accept that climate change is a problem and build new infrastructure/design new crops etc to deal with it.

Question 4

Geoengineering

Answer 4

Deliberately interfere with Q’, lambda and alpha to reduce the effects of climate change.

Question 5

Carbo Dioxide Removal (CDR)

Answer 5

Greatly increase the rate of CO2 uptake to bring the CO2 concentration down.

Question 6

Advantages of CDR

Answer 6

We know what a lower CO2 climate is like, so no big surprises.

Question 7

Disadvantages of CDR

Answer 7

Expensive and slow to act.

Question 8

Solar Radiation Management (SRM)

Answer 8

Counteract green house gas warming by reflecting more sunlight to space.

Question 9

Advantages of SRM

Answer 9

Cheap and fast.

Question 10

Disadvantages of SRM

Answer 10

It should reduce global mean temperature change, but it is uncertain as to what happens regionally.