Future Climate Change Scenarios for Florida

This chapter describes both the nature of and anthropogenic mechanisms for climate change, as well as how scenarios and projections of future climate change are made. Specific emphasis is placed on understanding the changes over the near-term (i.e., adaption timescale) where the emission scenario has little impact vs. changes beyond the mid-century where the projections are conditional on the emission scenario. The various tools and models used to assess climate change are also summarized, and projections from global and regional models are presented. Finally, the new science of decadal prediction is presented as it has the potential to improve climate information in the near-term.