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52 CLIMATE CHANGE ALBERTAS BIODIVERSITY There is considerable uncertainty in predicting future climatic conditions and their effects on Albertas biodiversity. Better understanding the sources of this uncertainty allows for more effective planning and decision-making. Predictions about future events or outcomes will always be uncertain. This is particularly true in projecting future conditions that result from the complex interactions between climate change and biodiversity. Importantly incorporation of predictions about future conditionsintoeffectivemanagementplanning requires an understanding of the sources of uncertainty and the level of confidence associated with those predictions. What contributes to uncertainty in climate change projections for biodiversity Uncertainty in projections for Albertas future biodiversity can arise from several sources including uncertainty in the accuracy of climatic conditions predicted by the global climate models GCMs differences in the modeling algorithms quality of the data used to parameterize the models and the often unpredictable ecological responses of species and communities to novel environments. The accuracy of GCMs will be influenced by the natural variability in climate systems by the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and by differences between the algorithms employed by different modeling groups. Uncertainty in the projections of future climate conditions increases through projected time the largest component of uncertainty about the far future is whether and how society limits emissions. Projectionsfromglobalclimatemodelswere employedbymuchoftheresearchonthe BMCCAprojectandinmostcasesuncertainties inmodelprojectionswereboundedbyreporting resultsfromseveraldifferentmodelsunderone ormoregreenhousegasemissionsscenario. What are we most confident about While outcomes from individual projects should be viewed with caution careful analysis suggests some robust generalities that emerge across studies. Higher levels of certainty are associated with good data and with agreement among differing analyses. Confidence is highest when there are multiple and consistent sources of high-quality evidence. For example Richard Schneider 2013 investigated changes in Albertas ecosystems under several climate change scenarios and concluded that the projected direction of change in the climates for each Subregion and the potential subsequent transformation of ecosystems were consistent for most of Albertas Natural Subregions and for the majority of climate models. Projections from different GCMs differed primarily in the speed with which the changes will occur. To examine the reliability of ecological niche models for predicting the future distribution of boreal birds Diana Stralberg and colleagues 2015 evaluated the magnitude of projected changes in species abundances relative to the uncertainty associated with those projections. They found that despite increasing uncertainty towards the end of the century the magnitude of the projected directional change in species abundance generally exceeded the uncertainty.