What is likely to happen to the global climate?

With the current level of greenhouse gas emissions, the global climate will continue to change, and there is now a better understanding of how the impacts of climate change will vary across the world.

In its latest AR4 Synthesis Report, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that:-

• For the next two decades a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is expected
• Afterwards, temperature projections increasingly depend on the levels of emissions.

There is growing understanding of how climate change might have variable impacts across the globe. The IPCC predicts:

• Warming will be greatest over land and at most high northern latitudes and least over the Southern Ocean and parts of the North Atlantic Ocean, continuing recent trends in contraction of snow cover area, increases in thaw depth over most permafrost regions, and decrease in sea ice extent
• Increase in frequency of hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation (rain and snow)
• Increase in tropical cyclone intensity
• Poleward shift of extra-tropical storm tracks with consequent changes in wind, precipitation, and temperature patterns
• Precipitation (rain and snow) increases in high latitudes and decreases in most subtropical land regions

More information on global variations in the impacts of climate change is available on pages 10 and 11 of the IPCC?s AR4 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers.

See also Climate Change in our World. The Met Office Hadley Centre, British Antarctic Survey and UK Government have harnessed Google Earth technology to present an interactive animation showing how climate change and global temperature rises could affect our world over the next 100 years.