A working group of the weather services of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, along with various federal, regional and climate research institutions, has produced a recommendation for a standardised German-language description of the climate scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

On 4 April 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented the results of Working Group III of the new IPCC report (AR6), which focuses on "measures for climate protection".

Climate scenarios are an important basis for developing targeted climate protection measures, as well as for climate research more broadly.

What are climate scenarios?

Climate scenarios are estimates of how the future climate will develop under certain conditions. They make different assumptions about the development of society (e.g. world population, urbanisation, education) and the economy (e.g. type of energy generation, technological progress, economic growth), and take into account the associated development of climate-relevant greenhouse gases and aerosols, serving as boundary conditions for climate models.

This makes it possible to estimate the impacts of different socioeconomic developments independently of climate protection efforts, and of varying degrees of climate protection ambition — either separately or in combination.

Recommendations for the characterisation of selected climate scenarios: ->Download PDF

You'll find these and further answers to questions about climate scenarios at: zamg.ac.at