Question: How high could the average temperature be in 40 years? And how accurate are these assumptions?

Hi Lucia,

Wow, what a question…erm…probably not a lot higher than it is today, maybe 1.5 – 2 °C higher? That’s what the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states in their future projection chapter, where there are graphs with data from different climate models (here’s the link to the document, the graphs are on pages 16 and 17 http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter10.pdf ; theres also a set of very nice diagrams on page 20 which show the temperature changes globally over the next 100 years) . Remember, climate change in general is gradual, and it takes many, many years for temperatures change drastically.

In terms of how accurate the assumptions are, I’d say relatively accurate – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chapter in their latest report has errors of ± 0.05 °C … thats pretty good in terms of accuracy (so thats the temperature plus or minus 0.05 °C ) . If it was >1 °C i’d be a bit skeptical about the data!

Hope that helps! If you’d like any more details comment below 🙂