RCP stands for ‘Representative Concentration Pathway’. To understand how our climate may change in future, we need to predict how we will behave. For example, will we continue to burn fossil fuels at an ever-increasing rate, or will we shift towards renewable energy?
- The RCPs try to capture these future trends. They make predictions of how concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will change in future as a result of human activities.
- The four RCPs range from very high (RCP8.5) through to very low (RCP2.6) future concentrations.
- A sizeable portion of recent studies on future climate impacts have focused on a warming scenario called “RCP8.5”. This high-emissions scenario is frequently referred to as “business as usual”, suggesting that is a likely outcome if society does not make concerted efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
- The RCPs were used in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2014 as a basis for the report’s findings.
