Figure SPM-3: The different
socio-economic assumptions underlying the SRES scenarios result in different levels
of future emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols. These emissions in turn
change the concentration of these gases and aerosols in the atmosphere, leading
to changed radiative forcing of the climate system. Radiative forcing due to the
SRES scenarios results in projected increases in temperature and sea level, which
in turn will cause impacts. The SRES scenarios do not include additional climate
initiatives and no probabilities of occurrence are assigned. Because the SRES
scenarios had only been available for a very short time prior to production of
the TAR, the impacts assessments here use climate model results that tend to be
based on equilibrium climate change scenarios (e.g., 2xCO2 ), a relatively
small number of experiments using a 1% per year CO2 increase transient
scenario, or the scenarios used in the SAR (i.e., the IS92 series). Impacts in
turn can affect socio-economic development paths through, for example, adaptation
and mitigation. The highlighted boxes along the top of the figure illustrate how
the various aspects relate to the integrated assessment framework for considering
climate change (see Figure SPM-1). Q3
Figure 3-1.
