Future Scenarios

The Outlooks present two future scenarios that illustrate how current efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will impact hazards over the next century.

The Local Hazard Outlooks present two different scenarios of the future for a locality. Scenarios are a possible representation of actions, events, or the future. The future will depend, in part, on the efforts that we take today to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and methane gas. Emissions refer to the release of a pollutant into the air as a gas or vapor.

The future scenarios were developed to represent possible carbon dioxide emissions for the next 100 years. Each scenario is based on assumptions about economic activity, energy sources, population growth, and other socio-economic factors (Moss et al., 2010). These scenarios are used to drive global earth system models to generate future extreme weather information. There are four scenarios in total, however, the Local Hazard Outlooks presents two scenarios, a higher-emissions scenario and a lower emissions scenario.

Each scenario applies a different amount of effort to reduce fossil fuel emissions. The higher-emissions scenario (RCP8.5) assumes continued increase of fossil fuel emissions. The lower-emissions scenario (RCP4.5), is a scenario that assumes a reduction of global fossil fuel emissions beginning by 2050 and stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations before 2100.

Additional information on future scenarios (i.e. Representative Concentration Pathways or RCPs) can be found at https://tntcat.iiasa.ac.at/RcpDb.

References

Moss RH, Edmonds JA, Hibbard KA, Manning MR, Rose SK, van Vuuren DP, Carter TR, Emori S, Kainuma M, Kram T, Meehl GA, Mitchell JF, Nakicenovic N, Riahi K, Smith SJ, Stouffer RJ, Thomson AM, Weyant JP, Wilbanks TJ (2010). The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment. Nature, 463(7282):747-56. doi:10.1038/nature08823.