Climate models agree things will get bad. Capturing just how bad is tricky
Earth’s climatic future is uncertain, but the world needs to prepare for change. Enter climate simulations, which re-create the physical interactions between land, sea and sky using well-known physical laws and equations. Such models can look into the past and reconstruct ancient ice ages or hothouse worlds with the help of data gleaned from rocks and ice cores. But climate scientists also use these simulations to envision a range of different possible futures, particularly in response to climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions. These Choose Your Own Adventure–type scenarios aim to predict what’s to come as a result of different emissions levels over the next few decades. That means putting upper and lower boundaries on answers to questions such as: How hot will it get? How high will the seas rise? The good news is that climate simulations are getting better at re-creating even the subtlest aspects of climate change, such as the complicated physics of clouds, the impact of aerosols...