Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

Enter a term in the search box to find its definition.

Settings

Use the controls in the far right panel to increase or decrease the number of terms automatically displayed (or to completely turn that feature off).

Term Lookup

Term:

Settings

Beginner Intermediate Advanced No Definitions Definition Life:

All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Home

Arguments

Software

Resources Comments

The Consensus Project

Translations

About Support

	Climate's changed before
	It's the sun
	It's not bad
	There is no consensus
	It's cooling
	Models are unreliable
	Temp record is unreliable
	Animals and plants can adapt
	It hasn't warmed since 1998
	Antarctica is gaining ice
	View All Arguments...

Latest Posts

Future global warming under business-as-usual

This graph shows that even at the lowest range of climate sensitivity, future global warming will take us well beyond any temperature experienced during civilised human history. The blue line represents reconstructed temperature (Marcott et al. 2013). The red line represents measured and projected global surface temperature (Meinshausen et al. 2011). The red dots show the projected warming in the year 2100 for three different climate sensitivities (high sensitivity 4.5°C, most likely sensitivity 3°C, low sensitivity 1.5°C). H/T to Joe Romm and Michael Tobis whose work inspired this graph.

For more info, see A Glimpse at Our Possible Future Climate, Best to Worst Case Scenarios.