How will temperatures change around the world?
• What will happen to the oceans? • Will there be more or less freshwater? • Will we be able to grow enough food? • Are any species at risk from global warming? • How will some people be affected? Also included is an experiment illustrating the effect of the melting of ice on sea level. Climate Modelling In order to assess the extent and impacts of climate change, complex computer simulations or ‘models’ are constructed. These models attempt to describe the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans and land. In such models the Earth is described as many homogeneous ‘cells’. These cells represent the highest level of detail of the model, in much the same way as one pixel is the highest level of detail on a computer screen. Even the best climate models have a very coarse resolution, with cells hundreds of kilometres square. Consequently, on a regional scale these models become very crude approximations to real climate systems. Modellers of climate therefore have decreasing confidence i