RCP 8.5

Extracted Attributes

Representative Concentration Pathway

Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) are climate change scenarios to project future greenhouse gas concentrations. These pathways (or trajectories) describe future greenhouse gas concentrations (not emissions) and have been formally adopted by the IPCC. The pathways describe different climate change scenarios, all of which were considered possible depending on the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted in the years to come. The four RCPs – originally RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6, and RCP8.5 – are labelled after the expected changes in radiative forcing values from the year 1750 to the year 2100 (2.6, 4.5, 6, and 8.5 W/m2, respectively). The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) began to use these four pathways for climate modeling and research in 2014. The higher values mean higher greenhouse gas emissions and therefore higher global surface temperatures and more pronounced effects of climate change. The lower RCP values, on the other hand, are more desirable for humans but would require more stringent climate change mitigation efforts to achieve them. In the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report the original pathways are now being considered together with Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. There are three new RCPs, namely RCP1.9, RCP3.4 and RCP7. A short description of the RCPs is as follows: RCP 1.9 is a pathway that limits global warming to below 1.5 °C, the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement. RCP 2.6 is a very stringent pathway. RCP 3.4 represents an intermediate pathway between the very stringent RCP2.6 and less stringent mitigation efforts associated with RCP4.5. RCP 4.5 is described by the IPCC as an intermediate scenario. In RCP 6, emissions peak around 2080, then decline. RCP7 is a baseline outcome rather than a mitigation target. In RCP 8.5—found in a study published in 2026 to be no longer plausible—emissions would continue to rise throughout the 21st century. For the extended RCP2.6 scenario, global warming of 0.0 to 1.2 °C is projected for the late 23rd century (2281–2300 average), relative to 1986–2005. For the extended RCP8.5, global warming of 3.0 to 12.6 °C is projected over the same time period.

Web Search Results

• RCP 8.5 Is Fine, Actually - Center for Progressive Reform

  If you are with us so far, it’s about to get more confusing. RCP 8.5 is meant as an example trajectory that could lead to a certain level of cumulative emissions (and hence warming) by the end of this century. Meaning, the scenario itself traces greenhouse gas concentrations (in the case of RCP 8.5, around 1100 ppm of CO2 by 2100), but the label for the scenario “8.5” is an estimate of the strength of the greenhouse effect resulting from those concentrations of GHGs. These are not the same thing, obviously, and this jump has led to a lot of confusion, in no small part because our scientific understanding of the relationship between atmospheric GHG concentrations and global average temperature rise has always been subject to substantial uncertainty—and debate. For instance, what if the [...] we have the IPCC process itself: it’s meant to standardize inputs (like emissions scenarios) so that we can compare outcomes. In fact, one of the primary purposes of the RCPs is to benchmark how each climate model responds to a standardized set of emissions so that we can understand which models might tend to run “hotter” or “colder.” For this purpose, RCP 8.5 is arguably the most valuable scenario due to its higher levels of GHG emissions: any model will have its biases, and the stronger “signal” of RCP 8.5 makes it easier to elicit and identify them, whereas the lower-emissions scenarios, with weaker signals, can have more “noise” — that is, more uncertainty about what could be causing a particular outcome in the modelling. As a result, RCP 8.5 has historically been the scenario run for [...] So from the perspectives of both model benchmarking and local risk assessment, RCP 8.5 serves a critical role. Then what is all of the controversy about? The answer lies in yet another use of these scenarios: assessing the plausibility of future climate outcomes. At its core, the idea is that the plausibility of the underlying emissions scenario reflects the plausibility of the range of outcomes from that scenario. This was the framing used by the authors of the original comment in Nature in 2020 that kicked all of this off: that the emissions associated with the specific RCP 8.5 trajectory were effectively impossible given the progress the world had made towards decarbonization and the future pledges made to help achieve the Paris Agreement targets. Prior work had shown that the specific

• RCP Database - IIASA

  The RCP 8.5 is characterized by increasing greenhouse gas emissions over time representative for scenarios in the literature leading to high greenhouse gas

• RCP 8.5 - Emissions Scenario Pathways | Climate Watch

  RCP 8.5 (highest among the RCPs) assumes high emissions between 2100 and 2150 and assumes to stabilize the concentrations only by 2250, at CO2 concentrations

• Representative Concentration Pathway - Wikipedia

  In RCP 8.5 emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century.: Figure 2, p. 223 RCP8.5 is generally taken as the basis for worst-case climate change scenarios. Since the publication of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014) the likelihood of this RCP has been debated, due to overestimation of projected coal outputs. On the other hand, many uncertainties remain on carbon cycle feedbacks, which could lead to warmer temperatures than projected in representative concentration pathways. RCP 8.5 is still used for predicting mid-century (and earlier) emissions based on current and stated policies. A study published on 7 April 2026 in Geoscientific Model Development concluded that emissions associated with RCP8.5 "have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the [...] Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) are climate change scenarios to project future greenhouse gas concentrations. These pathways (or trajectories) describe future greenhouse gas concentrations (not emissions) and have been formally adopted by the IPCC. The pathways describe different climate change scenarios, all of which were considered possible depending on the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted in the years to come. The four RCPs – originally RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6, and RCP8.5 – are labelled after the expected changes in radiative forcing values from the year 1750 to the year 2100 (2.6, 4.5, 6, and 8.5 W/m2, respectively). The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) began to use these four pathways for climate modeling and research in 2014. The higher values mean higher [...] In the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report the original pathways are now being considered together with Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. There are three new RCPs, namely RCP1.9, RCP3.4 and RCP7. A short description of the RCPs is as follows: RCP 1.9 is a pathway that limits global warming to below 1.5 °C, the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement. RCP 2.6 is a very stringent pathway. RCP 3.4 represents an intermediate pathway between the very stringent RCP2.6 and less stringent mitigation efforts associated with RCP4.5. RCP 4.5 is described by the IPCC as an intermediate scenario. In RCP 6, emissions peak around 2080, then decline. RCP7 is a baseline outcome rather than a mitigation target. In RCP 8.5—found in a study published in 2026 to be no longer plausible—emissions would continue to

• Explainer: The high-emissions ‘RCP8.5’ global warming scenario

  RCP8.5 was specifically selected as a high-end baseline scenario, and was not intended to be portrayed as the most likely “business as usual” no-policy outcome. The researchers emphasise this point in their paper, showing how the emissions in each scenario compared to the range found in the energy modelling literature at the time. The figure below, taken from their paper, shows each RCP compared to the 90th percentile (dark grey) and 98th percentile (light grey) of energy modeling scenarios in the literature that had been previously developed by researchers. [...] As Riahi tells Carbon Brief: “RCP8.5 is, because of its assumptions of high population and slow technological progress, on the higher end of the range of possible baseline scenarios…I wished I would have been clearer with what I meant by business as usual in that paragraph.” The high-end nature of the RCP8.5 relative to other no-policy baselines was poorly communicated to the wider scientific community, and RCP8.5 – being the only available RCP scenario with no climate policy included – came to be widely referred to as the “business as usual” outcome in hundreds of different papers published in the aftermath of the IPCC AR5. [...] In recent years the emissions scenario used to generate RCP8.5 has come under criticism by a number of researchers for its assumptions around high future emissions and a dramatic expansion of coal use. At the same time, a new set of future scenarios – the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) – has since been released, offering a broader view of what a world without future climate policy might look like. In this article, Carbon Brief examines how the emissions scenario underlying RCP8.5 was developed and how it has subsequently been used in the academic literature and media. According to the researchers who developed it, RCP8.5 was intended to be a “very high baseline emission scenario” representing the 90th percentile of no-policy baseline scenarios available at the time.