Abstract
Climate change scenarios represent plausible alternative future climate states that can occur under certain assumptions about the evolution of anthropogenic climate forcings, in particular emissions and concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, but also changes in land use. Possible pathways used to be presented in the form of emission scenarios, but today more broadly defined 'socio-economic pathways' (SSPs) are available.
Climate change scenarios are a tool for finding the limits of possible future developments. Estimates of future climate can be made in different ways.
Nowadays they are mostly based on the outputs of global climate models, with possible application of downscaling approach. The model outputs then need to be subjected to some form of post-processing before further application in order to reduce the impact of known model errors.
The extent of uncertainty associated with the resulting data should also be assessed. In particular, the procedures used in the PERUN project will be presented, but also other options, including recent approaches such as storylines and global warming levels will be mentioned.