Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

Coordinating Editors:
Sophie Berger (France/Belgium), Sarah L. Connors (France/United Kingdom)

Drafting Authors:
Richard P. Allan (United Kingdom), Paola A. Arias (Colombia), Kyle Armour (United States of America),
Terje Berntsen (Norway), Lisa Bock (Germany), Ruth Cerezo-Mota (Mexico), Kim Cobb (United States
of America), Alejandro Di Luca (Australia, Canada/Argentina), Paul Edwards (United States of America),
Tamsin L. Edwards (United Kingdom), Seita Emori (Japan), François Engelbrecht (South Africa), Veronika
Eyring (Germany), Piers Forster (United Kingdom), Baylor Fox- Kemper (United States of America),
Sandro Fuzzi (Italy), John C. Fyfe (Canada), Nathan P. Gillett (Canada), Nicholas R. Golledge (New
Zealand/United Kingdom), Melissa I. Gomis (France/Switzerland), William J. Gutowski (United States
of America), Rafiq Hamdi (Belgium), Mathias Hauser (Switzerland), Ed Hawkins (United Kingdom),
Nigel Hawtin (United Kingdom), Darrell S. Kaufman (United States of America), Megan Kirchmeier-
Young (Canada/ United States of America), Charles Koven (United States of America), June-Yi Lee
(Republic of Korea), Sophie Lewis (Australia), Jochem Marotzke (Germany), Valérie Masson-Delmotte
(France), Thorsten Mauritsen (Sweden/Denmark), Thomas K. Maycock (United States of America),
Shayne McGregor (Australia), Sebastian Milinski (Germany), Olaf Morgenstern (New Zealand/
Germany), Swapna Panickal (India), Joeri Rogelj (United Kingdom/Belgium), Maisa Rojas (Chile), Alex
C. Ruane (United States of America), Bjørn H. Samset (Norway), Trude Storelvmo (Norway), Sophie
Szopa (France), Jessica Tierney (United States of America), Russell S. Vose (United States of America),
Masahiro Watanabe (Japan), Sönke Zaehle (Germany), Xuebin Zhang (Canada), Kirsten Zickfeld
(Canada/Germany)

These Frequently Asked Questions have been extracted from the chapters of the underlying report and are compiled
here. When referencing specific FAQs, please reference the corresponding chapter in the report from where the FAQ
originated (e.g., FAQ 3.1 is part of Chapter 3).

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 Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 1.1 | Do We Understand Climate Change Better Now Compared to When the IPCC Started?

Yes, much better. The first IPCC report, released in 1990, concluded that human-caused climate change would
soon become evident, but could not yet confirm that it was already happening. Today, evidence is overwhelming
that the climate has indeed changed since the pre-industrial era and that human activities are the principal cause
of that change. With much more data and better models, we also understand more about how the atmosphere
interacts with the ocean, ice, snow, ecosystems and land surfaces of the Earth. Computer climate simulations
have also improved dramatically, incorporating many more natural processes and providing projections at much
higher resolutions.

Since the first IPCC report in 1990, large numbers of new instruments have been deployed to collect data in the
air, on land, at sea and from outer space. These instruments measure temperature, clouds, winds, ice, snow,
ocean currents, sea level, soot and dust in the air, and many other aspects of the climate system. New satellite
instruments have also provided a wealth of increasingly fine-grained data. Additional data from older observing
systems and even hand-written historical records are still being incorporated into observational datasets, and
these datasets are now better integrated and adjusted for historical changes in instruments and measurement
techniques. Ice cores, sediments, fossils, and other new evidence from the distant past have taught us much
about how Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history.

Understanding of climate system processes has also improved. For example, in 1990 very little was known about
how the deep ocean responds to climate change. Today, reconstructions of deep-ocean temperatures extend as
far back as 1871. We now know that the oceans absorb most of the excess energy trapped by greenhouse gases
and that even the deep ocean is warming up. As another example, in 1990, relatively little was known about
exactly how or when the gigantic ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica would respond to warming. Today,
much more data and better models of ice-sheet behaviour reveal unexpectedly high melt rates that will lead to
major changes within this century, including substantial sea level rise (FAQ 9.2).

The major natural factors contributing to climate change on time scales of decades to centuries are volcanic
eruptions and variations in the sun’s energy output. Today, data show that changes in incoming solar energy
since 1900 have contributed only slightly to global warming, and they exhibit a slight downward trend since the
FAQ 1970s. Data also show that major volcanic eruptions have sometimes cooled the entire planet for relatively short
periods of time (typically several years) by erupting aerosols (tiny airborne particles) high into the atmosphere.

The main human causes of climate change are the heat-absorbing greenhouse gases released by fossil fuel
combustion, deforestation, and agriculture, which warm the planet; and aerosols such as sulphate from burning
coal, which have a short-term cooling effect that partially counteracts human-caused warming. Since 1990, we
have more and better observations of these human factors as well as improved historical records, resulting in
more precise estimates of human influence on the climate system (FAQ 3.1).

While most climate models in 1990 focused on the atmosphere, using highly simplified representations of oceans
and land surfaces, today’s Earth system simulations include detailed models of oceans, ice, snow, vegetation and
many other variables. An important test of models is their ability to simulate Earth’s climate over the period
of instrumental records (since about 1850). Several rounds of such testing have taken place since 1990, and
the testing itself has become much more rigorous and extensive. As a group and at large scales, models have
predicted the observed changes well in these tests (FAQ 3.3). Since there is no way to do a controlled laboratory
experiment on the actual Earth, climate model simulations can also provide a kind of ‘alternate Earth’ to test
what would have happened without human influence. Such experiments show that the observed warming
would not have occurred without human influence.

Finally, physical theory predicts that human influence on the climate system should produce specific patterns
of change, and we see those patterns in both observations and climate simulations. For example, nights are
warming faster than days, less heat is escaping to space, and the lower atmosphere (troposphere) is warming but
the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) has cooled. These confirmed predictions are all evidence of changes driven
primarily by increases in GHG concentrations rather than natural causes.

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 Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 1.1 (continued)

FAQ 1.1: Do we understand climate change better than when the IPCC started?
Yes. Between 1990 and 2021, observations, models and climate understanding improved, while the dominant
role of human influence in global warming was confirmed.

1990 2021
IPCC IPCC
First Sixth
Assessment Assessment
Understanding
Human influence on climate ? Suspected Established fact

Energy budget Open Closed

(inconsistent estimates) (inputs = outputs + retained energy)
Sea level budget Open Closed
(inconsistent estimates) (sum of contributions = observed sea level rise)

Observations
Global warming since late 1800s 0.3–0.6°C 0.95–1.20°C

Land surface temperature 1887 stations (1861–1990) Up to 40,000 stations (1750–2020)

Geological records 5 million years (temperature) 65 million years (temperature)

5 million years (sea level) 50 million years (sea level)
160,000 years (CO2) 450 milion years (CO2)

Global ocean heat content 1955–1981 (two regions) 1871–2018 (global)

Satellite remote sensing Temperature, snow cover, Temperature, cryosphere, Earth radiation budget, CO2,
Earth radiation budget sea level, clouds, aerosols, land cover, many others

FAQ
Climate models Global Global Regional

State of the art General circulation models Earth system High-resolution

models models

Typical model resolution 500 km 100 km 25–50 km

Major elements Circulating atmosphere and ocean Circulating atmosphere and ocean

Radiative transfer Radiative transfer

Land physics Land physics

Sea ice Sea ice

Atmospheric chemistry

Land use/cover

Land and ocean biogeochemistry

Aerosol and cloud interations

FAQ 1.1, Figure 1 | Sample elements of climate understanding, observations and models as assessed in the IPCC First Assessment Report
(1990) and Sixth Assessment Report (2021). Many other advances since 1990, such as key aspects of theoretical understanding, geological records and
attribution of change to human influence, are not included in this figure because they are not readily represented in this simple format. Fuller explanations of
the history of climate knowledge are available in the introductory chapters of the IPCC Fourth and Sixth assessment reports.

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 Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 1.2 | Where Is Climate Change Most Apparent?

The signs of climate change are unequivocal at the global scale and are increasingly apparent on smaller spatial
scales. The high northern latitudes show the largest temperature increase, with clear effects on sea ice and
glaciers. The warming in the tropical regions is also apparent because the natural year-to-year variations in
temperature there are small. Long-term changes in other variables such as rainfall and some weather and climate
extremes have also now become apparent in many regions.

It was first noticed that the planet’s land areas were warming in the 1930s. Although increasing atmospheric
carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations were suggested as part of the explanation, it was not certain at the time
whether the observed warming was part of a long-term trend or a natural fluctuation: global warming had not
yet become apparent. But the planet continued to warm, and by the 1980s the changes in temperature had
become obvious or, in other words, the signal had emerged.

Imagine you had been monitoring temperatures at the same location for the past 150 years. What would you
have experienced? When would the warming have become noticeable in your data? The answers to these
questions depend on where on the planet you are.

Observations and climate model simulations both demonstrate that the largest long-term warming trends are in
the high northern latitudes and the smallest warming trends over land are in tropical regions. However, the year-
to-year variations in temperature are smallest in the tropics, meaning that the changes there are also apparent,
relative to the range of past experiences (FAQ 1.2, Figure 1).

Changes in temperature also tend to be more apparent over land areas than over the open ocean and are often
most apparent in regions which are more vulnerable to climate change. It is expected that future changes will
continue to show the largest signals at high northern latitudes, but with the most apparent warming in the
tropics. The tropics also stand to benefit the most from climate change mitigation in this context, as limiting
global warming will also limit how far the climate shifts relative to past experience.

Changes in other climate variables have also become apparent at smaller spatial scales. For example, changes
in average rainfall are becoming clear in some regions, but not in others, mainly because natural year-to-year
FAQ variations in precipitation tend to be large relative to the magnitude of the long-term trends. However, extreme
rainfall is becoming more intense in many regions, potentially increasing the impacts from inland flooding (FAQ
8.2). Sea levels are also clearly rising on many coastlines, increasing the impacts of inundation from coastal storm
surges, even without any increase in the number of storms reaching land. A decline in the amount of Arctic sea
ice is apparent, both in the area covered and in its thickness, with implications for polar ecosystems.

When considering climate-related impacts, it is not necessarily the size of the change that is most important.
Instead, it can be the rate of change or it can also be the size of the change relative to the natural variations
of the climate to which ecosystems and society are adapted. As the climate is pushed further away from past
experiences and enters an unprecedented state, the impacts can become larger, along with the challenge of
adapting to them.

How and when a long-term trend becomes distinguishable from shorter-term natural variations depends on the
aspect of climate being considered (e.g., temperature, rainfall, sea ice or sea level), the region being considered,
the rate of change, and the magnitude and timing of natural variations. When assessing the local impacts from
climate change, both the size of the change and the amplitude of natural variations matter.

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 Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 1.2 (continued)

FAQ 1.2: Where is climate change most apparent?

Temperature changes are most apparent in regions with smaller natural variations.

Estimation of:
2 standard deviations of natural year-to-year variations
1 standard deviation of natural year-to-year variations

High latitudes (e.g. mid-North America) Low latitudes (e.g. Tropical South America)
°C
Temperature change since 1850-1900 (°C)

2.0 2.0

1.5 1.5
Smaller trend that
deviates earlier
1.0 1.0 from past conditions

0.5 0.5

0 0

-0.5 -0.5

-1.0 -1.0
1860 1890 1920 1950 1980 2010 1860 1890 1920 1950 1980 2010

FAQ 1.2, Figure 1 | Observed variations in regional temperatures since 1850 (data from Berkeley Earth). Regions in high latitudes, such as
mid-North America (40°N–64°N, 140°W–60°W, left), have warmed by a larger amount than regions at lower latitudes, such as tropical South America
(10°S–10°N, 84°W–16°W, right), but the natural variations are also much larger at high latitudes (darker and lighter shading represents 1 and 2 standard
deviations, respectively, of natural year-to-year variations). The signal of observed temperature change emerged earlier in tropical South America than mid-
North America even though the changes were of a smaller magnitude. (Note that those regions were chosen because of the longer length of their observational
record; see Figure 1.14 for more regions).
FAQ

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 Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 1.3 | What Can Past Climate Teach Us About the Future?

In the past, the Earth has experienced prolonged periods of elevated greenhouse gas concentrations that caused
global temperatures and sea levels to rise. Studying these past warm periods informs us about the potential long-
term consequences of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving profound changes to the Earth system, including global
warming, sea level rise, increases in climate and weather extremes, ocean acidification, and ecological shifts
(FAQ 2.2 and FAQ 7.1). The vast majority of instrumental observations of climate began during the 20th century,
when greenhouse gas emissions from human activities became the dominant driver of changes in Earth’s
climate (FAQ 3.1).

As scientists seek to refine our understanding of Earth’s climate system and how it may evolve in coming decades
to centuries, past climate states provide a wealth of insights. Data about these past states help to establish the
relationship between natural climate drivers and the history of changes in global temperature, global sea levels,
the carbon cycle, ocean circulation, and regional climate patterns, including climate extremes. Guided by such
data, scientists use Earth system models to identify the chain of events underlying the transitions between past
climatic states (FAQ 3.3). This is important because during present-day climate change, just as in past climate
changes, some aspects of the Earth system (e.g., surface temperature) respond to changes in greenhouse gases
on a time scale of decades to centuries, while others (e.g., sea level and the carbon cycle) respond over centuries
to millennia (FAQ 5.3). In this way, past climate states serve as critical benchmarks for climate model simulations,
improving our understanding of the sequences, rates, and magnitude of future climate change over the next
decades to millennia.

Analyzing previous warm periods caused by natural factors can help us understand how key aspects of the
climate system evolve in response to warming. For example, one previous warm-climate state occurred roughly
125,000 years ago, during the Last Interglacial period, when slight variations in the Earth’s orbit triggered
a sequence of changes that caused about 1°C–2°C of global warming and about 2–8 m of sea level rise relative
to the 1850–1900, even though atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were similar to 1850–1900 values
(FAQ 1.3, Figure 1). Modelling studies highlight that increased summer heating in the higher latitudes of the
FAQ Northern Hemisphere during this time caused widespread melting of snow and ice, reducing the reflectivity of
the planet and increasing the absorption of solar energy by the Earth’s surface. This gave rise to global-scale
warming, which led in turn to further ice loss and sea level rise. These self-reinforcing positive feedback cycles are
a pervasive feature of Earth’s climate system, with clear implications for future climate change under continued
greenhouse gas emissions. In the case of sea level rise, these cycles evolved over several centuries to millennia,
reminding us that the rates and magnitude of sea level rise in the 21st century are just a fraction of the sea level
rise that will ultimately occur after the Earth system fully adjusts to current levels of global warming.

Roughly 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch, the Earth witnessed a prolonged period of elevated
temperatures (2.5°C–4°C higher than 1850–1900) and higher sea levels (5–25 m higher than 1850–1900), in
combination with atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations similar to those of the present day. The fact that
Pliocene atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were similar to the present, while global temperatures and
sea levels were significantly higher, reflects the difference between an Earth system that has fully adjusted to
changes in natural drivers (the Pliocene) and one where greenhouse gases concentrations, temperature, and sea
level rise are still increasing (present day). Much about the transition into the Pliocene climate state – in terms of
key causes, the role of cycles that hastened or slowed the transition, and the rate of change in climate indicators
such as sea level – remain topics of intense study by climate researchers, using a combination of paleoclimate
observations and Earth system models. Insights from such studies may help to reduce the large uncertainties
around estimates of global sea level rise by 2300, which range from 0.3 m to 3 m above 1850–1900 (in a low-
emissions scenario) to as much as 16 m higher than 1850–1900 (in a very high-emissions scenario that includes
accelerating structural disintegration of the polar ice sheets).

While present-day warming is unusual in the context of the recent geologic past in several different ways
(FAQ 2.1), past warm climate states present a stark reminder that the long-term adjustment to present-day
atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has only just begun. That adjustment will continue over the coming
centuries to millennia.

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 Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 1.3 (continued)

FAQ 1.3: What can the past tell us about the future?
Past warm periods inform about the potential consequences of rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Distant Present Future

past emission scenarios

1135
ppm
High

360-420 ppm 397 ppm

291 ppm 445
266-282 ppm* ppm
Low
Atmospheric CO2

Pliocene Last interglacial* 1850-1900 2011-2020 2100

3 Million years ago 125,000 years ago

+3.3-5.7°C

+2.5-4.0°C

Fast response +1.3-2.4°C

Decades to centuries +0.5-1.5°C*
+1.1°C
Global temperature
0°C
relative to 1850–1900

+5-25m

Slow response FAQ

Centuries to millennia +5-10m*
Global sea level +0.8-1.2m
0m +0.2m +0.5-0.8m
relative to 1850–1900

After adjustment Ongoing

*Triggered by changes in the Earth’s orbit, which redistributed incoming solar energy between seasons and latitudes

FAQ 1.3, Figure 1 | Comparison of past, present and future. Schematic of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, global temperature, and global
sea level during previous warm periods as compared to 1850–1900, present-day (2011–2020), and future (2100) climate change scenarios corresponding to
low-emissions scenarios (SSP1-2.6; lighter colour bars) and very high-emissions scenarios (SSP5-8.5; darker colour bars).

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