How Do We Predict Future Changes?
As you might imagine, it is very difficult to predict changes and how expansive these changes might be. Imagine yourself as a TV weather person predicting the weather for today, tomorrow, and, "the forecast for 100 years from today is????" What scientists have done is made a list of what will happen and what may happen and given us a probability factor for each item on their list. When looking at this list, it is important to understand how they arrived at their conclusions. Some of the factors they analyzed include the following:
- Present concentrations of greenhouse gases
- Present rate of increase of each of these greenhouse gases
- Effect of each of these gases on the heat budget
- Interaction between these gases and the biotic and abiotic environments
- History of climatic change
- General (atmospheric) circulation models weighing each of the preceding factors.