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Climate Models: Their Strengths and How To Use Them
Provided by: Probable Futures |Published on: December 11, 2025
Articles/Websites
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Synopsis
In this article from Probable Futures, students will understand how climate models are used to predict future risks of climate change, depending on the degree of warming.
Students will understand how different types of models are set up and what they can be used for.
This article includes interactive maps to see how different amounts of warming may affect the same geographic region.
The article also links to helpful articles that can deepen students' understanding of the topic.
Prerequisites
Students should be familiar with models as a general concept.
Students may benefit from having an understanding of climate change, its causes, and its impacts.
It may also benefit students to understand how climate change is measured by degrees of warming. This article can help explain the idea to students.
Differentiation & Implementation
Teachers can use the final paragraph in the article to transition to a discussion or lesson on feedback loops and tipping points. Teachers can use this video to introduce feedback loops, and this one to introduce tipping points.
After reading, students can discuss how climate models can be used to make decisions. After students discuss for a while, teachers can have them work with the En-ROADS simulator. This lesson can help students evaluate different solutions and their efficacy using the simulator.
To make connections to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, teachers can highlight the obvious connection to Goal 13, Climate Action, but also have students discuss how climate models can be used to assess and make decisions that contribute to the other goals.
Scientist Notes
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Resource Type and Format
About the Partner Provider
Probable Futures
Probable Futures offers useful tools and maps to visualize climate change along with stories and insights to help people understand what those changes mean.
Related Teaching Resources
All resources can be used for your educational purposes with proper attribution to the content provider.
