SUMMARY

Content Source: CLEAN

Selected for the CLEAN Collection:

The Climate Momentum Simulation allows users to quickly compare the resulting sea level rise, temperature change, atmospheric CO2, and global CO2 emissions from six different policy options: 1) Business As Usual, 2) March 2009 Country Proposals, 3) Flatten CO2 emissions by 2025, 4) 29% below 2009 levels by 2040, 5) 80% reduction of global fossil fuel plus a 90% reduction in land use emissions by 2050, and 6) 95 reduction of CO2 emissions by 2020). Based on the more complex C-ROADS simulator.
 

GOALS

Following suggestions are by CLEAN Reviewers:

• One of a suite of simulations designed to help convey the challenge of reducing emissions and how various reduction scenarios will play out on sea level and temperature.
• There is no specific teacher's guide for this animation. Interested educators will need to refer to material on the C-ROADS simulator that was used to develop the outputs. See:http://climateinteractive.org/simulations/C-ROADS/overview.

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION AND TEACHING MATERIALS

Watch >> Climate Momentum Simulation

Printable  >> Discussion Questions

TEACHING NOTES / CONTEXT FOR USE

CLEAN reviewers comments about this resource:

About the Science:

• A simple simulation with slider bar that shows how different scenarios impact sea level rise, temperature, atmospheric CO₂ and Global CO₂ emissions.
• This simulation was designed by Drew Jones and Nicholas Owens of Booksmuggler using output from the C-ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support) simulation (seehttp://climateinteractive.org/simulations/C-ROADS/overview).
• C-ROADS is a decision-maker-oriented simulation that helps users understand the long-term climate impacts of scenarios to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• There is a thorough technical reference (including data sources from IPCC AR4) for C-ROADS athttp://climateinteractive.org/simulations/C-ROADS/technical/technical-reference/C-ROADS%20simulation%20reference%20guide%20.
• Passed initial science review - expert science review pending.

About the Pedagogy

• This visualization is a convenient way of presenting four important projected climate impacts for years 2000-2100 based on six different scenarios.
• It would be helpful to have more info about the scenarios -- although the bottom panel (CO₂) emissions gives a good indication of what drives the simulations.
• By comparing the results, students will get a sense of the impacts of several global policy options.
• Because users are not running the full C-ROADS simulations but rather looking at the outputs from the six different runs, they may not fully appreciate the policy options or how the results are obtained, but this can serve as an introduction to help set the stage for examining the assumptions and data embedded in the C-ROADS simulator.
• One small but important piece of the puzzle this simulation demonstrates is that sea level and temperature will continue to rise even if we achieve 95% reduction of carbon emissions.

Technical Details/Ease of Use

• There is a widget that can be downloaded to embed the tool on other websites.
• This resource runs in Adobe Flash, which is not available for all devices such as iPads.

Assessment is at the discretion of the educator and how this video is applied.