Plausible future socioeconomic pathways for annual carbon dioxide emissions (left) and the resulting atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations (right) through the end of the century. A shared socioeconomic pathway is an internally consistent set of assumptions about future population growth, global and regional economic activity, and technological advances. Models use these pathways to project a range of possible future carbon dioxide emissions; for simplicity, the image only shows the only the mean value. NOAA Climate.gov graphic adapted from figure TS.4 in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report Technical Summary.