# 7 Session 4 summary

Climate scientists make predictions of the Earth system using a variety of climate models that encapsulate as much of current knowledge as possible. Predictions are made for different scenarios – currently the four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) – that are intended to span the range of our possible futures (emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants, and land use changes).

In this session you have studied several of the IPCC’s predictions about future climate change and its impacts on humans and other life. As you can see, these assessments of future climate risks are a key part of our potential motivation for geoengineering.

You are now halfway through the course. The Open University would really appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future improvement in our optional end-of-course survey, which you will also have an opportunity to complete at the end of Week 8. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

In the next session, you will study some of the possible methods of engineering our climate. Get started on Session 5.

OpenLearn - Could we control our climate?
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.