Climate Models and Their Projections of Future Changes

Abstract

This chapter describes global climate models and their output. The current approaches for analyzing their simulations, characterizing the range of likely future outcomes, and making projections relevant for impact analysis are described, specifically referring to the latest assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We provide a summary of future projections of average temperature and precipitation changes at continental scales, together with a broad brush picture of the likely changes in indices of extremes, characterizing both temperature and precipitation events. An analysis of changes in growing season length is also presented as an example of climate model output analysis directly relevant to studies of climate change impacts on food security.