GCC Team Project- Emission Scenarios-Purpose

Scenarios and Their Purposes

IPCC's Special Report on Emission Scenarios explains that these "what-if" scenarios assist in climate change analysis, including climate modeling and the assessment of impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. The possibility that any single emissions path will occur as described in the scenarios is highly unlikely. From the book Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties (2005) we are told:

"Developing emissions scenarios is tantamount to asking how different societies will produce, transform, and consume energy; extract and use Earth's resources; and modify the landscape for the next century. The possible answers to this vast and complex question are manifold. Uncertainties arise in all facets of the problem of building long-term scenarios. Moreover, unforeseen events, such as a revolutionary breakthrough in technology or a geopolitical shift, could occur and radically alter future emissions."