2.4 Chapter Summary

This chapter of the UTCDW Guidebook has introduced you to some fundamental terms and concepts in climate science, as well as the numerical models that are used to produce projections of future climate. We’ve also covered the main sources of uncertainty in climate modeling, which cascade and compound into uncertainty in the final results you’ll use for your impact assessment work. The three dominant sources of uncertainty are:

• Uncertainty in future climate forcing (scenario uncertainty)

• Fluctuations due to internal climate variability

• Errors in model representation of the climate (model structural uncertainty)

This background knowledge will be critical moving forward as you start to work with both observational climate data and climate model output in the following chapters of the Guidebook.