The further forward we go in time, the harder it is to predict what will happen.

Models currently suggest that we will reach 7 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2200, but that temperatures will then stabilise, provided we have stopped emitting greenhouse gases reenex
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    Climate models can only make predictions based on what we know

However, we cannot be certain of this, because the Earth’s climate is a complex system. As the climate warms, several processes operate that can cause even more warming.

For instance, snow and ice melt away in a warmer world, exposing dark ground that absorbs the Sun’s heat rather than reflecting it. Similarly, more water vapour evaporates from the surface, and since water vapour is a greenhouse gas this traps even more heatreenex .

The oceans actually slow climate change, because carbon dioxide dissolves into them from the air. But warmer oceans can hold less carbon dioxide, leaving ever more in the atmosphere.

These feedbacks are relatively well understood, but others are harder to unravel: for example, how changing cloud cover will affect the climate, or when methane locked up in permafrost at the poles will be released. Climate models can only make predictions based on what we know, so as temperatures rise further beyond anything humans have experienced, their predictions become less reliable.

So rather than trying to predict what the climate will do from first principles, we can take another approach: we can look at what has happened in the pastreenex .