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This variety of climate models is the reason long-term predictions tend to be all over the place, with some models predicting only a few degrees of warming while other models predict a lot more. While some people have been pointing to the more milder predictions as evidence that climate change might not be that bad, there is some bad news. A team of researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science has found that the most accurate models so far also tend to be the most severe ones.

The new study, published in Nature, compared more than a decade’s worth of data from climate satellites to a wide range of different climate models. This data included the amount of sunlight reflected back into space, how much heat is leaving the Earth, and how much total energy is entering and leaving the atmosphere. Scientists then analyzed various climate models for that period to see which ones came closest to predicting reality.

The researchers found that the most accurate models were the ones that predicted the most warming over the next century. This means that rather than see only a few degrees of warming—as predicted by some of the milder models—we’re much more likely to see almost twice that.

According to the paper, there’s a good chance we could see 5 degrees C of warming by 2100, and a 95 percent chance of more than 4 degrees of warming, assuming we do nothing to stop it. The goal set by the Paris agreement in 2015—to keep warming below 2 degrees C by the end of the century—is looking increasingly impossible. Source: MIT Technology Review