Figure: Effect of climate change on average and extreme temperatures
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Effect of climate change on average and extreme temperatures. The horizontal axis represents temperature (from Figure 4.1 IPCC Synthesis Report, Watson et al 2001). Note that the horizontal axis is not to scale, and the diagram is illustrative only.
Text description of figure
The figure illustrates how two aspects of climate - average and extreme temperatures - are closely connected. The horizontal axis is temperature, and the vertical axis is probability of occurrence. In this simplified example, normally distributed frequency distributions curves of temperatures for present and future climates display the extremes in the distributions by shading areas as representing portions of the curves that are below freezing and above 30 degrees Celsius. For a three degree Celsius shift in the average temperature, a future climate could expect a total cessation of frosts, and an increased frequency of high and very high temperatures than previously experienced under the current climate.
