Browsing by Author "Ebi, Kristie L"

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    A new scenario framework for climate change research: background, process, and future directions
    (Springer, 2014) Ebi, Kristie L; Hallegatte, Stephane; Kram, Tom; Arnell, Nigel W; Carter, Timothy R; Edmonds, Jae; Kriegler, Elmar; Mathur, Ritu; O’Neill, Brian C; Riahi, Keywan; Winkler, Harald; Van Vuuren, Detlef P; Zwickel, Timm
    The scientific community is developing new global, regional, and sectoral scenarios to facilitate interdisciplinary research and assessment to explore the range of possible future climates and related physical changes that could pose risks to human and natural systems; how these changes could interact with social, economic, and environmental development pathways; the degree to which mitigation and adaptation policies can avoid and reduce risks; the costs and benefits of various policy mixes; and the relationship of future climate change adaptation and mitigation policy responses with sustainable development. This paper provides the background to and process of developing the conceptual framework for these scenarios, as described in the three subsequent papers in this Special Issue (Van Vuuren et al., 2013; O’Neill et al., 2013; Kriegler et al., Submitted for publication in this special issue). The paper also discusses research needs to further develop, apply, and revise this framework in an iterative and open-ended process. A key goal of the framework design and its future development is to facilitate the collaboration of climate change researchers from a broad range of perspectives and disciplines to develop policy- and decision-relevant scenarios and explore the challenges and opportunities human and natural systems could face with additional climate change.
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    A new scenario framework for climate change research: scenario matrix architecture
    (Springer, 2014) Van Vuuren, Detlef P; Kriegler, Elmar; O’Neill, Brian C; Ebi, Kristie L; Riahi, Keywan; Carter, Timothy R; Edmonds, Jae; Hallegatte, Stephane; Kram, Tom; Mathur, Ritu; Winkler, Harald
    This paper describes the scenario matrix architecture that underlies a framework for developing new scenarios for climate change research. The matrix architecture facilitates addressing key questions related to current climate research and policy-making: identifying the effectiveness of different adaptation and mitigation strategies (in terms of their costs, risks and other consequences) and the possible trade-offs and synergies. The two main axes of the matrix are: 1) the level of radiative forcing of the climate system (as characterised by the representative concentration pathways) and 2) a set of alternative plausible trajectories of future global development (described as shared socio-economic pathways). The matrix can be used to guide scenario development at different scales. It can also be used as a heuristic tool for classifying new and existing scenarios for assessment. Key elements of the architecture, in particular the shared socio-economic pathways and shared policy assumptions (devices for incorporating explicit mitigation and adaptation policies), are elaborated in other papers in this special issue.
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    A new scenario framework for climate change research: the concept of shared climate policy assumptions
    (Springer, 2014) Kriegler, Elmar; Edmonds, Jae; Hallegatte, Stéphane; Ebi, Kristie L; Kram, Tom; Riahi, Keywan; Winkler, Harald; Van Vuuren, Detlef P
    The new scenario framework facilitates the coupling of multiple socioeconomic reference pathways with climate model products using the representative concentration pathways. This will allow for improved assessment of climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation. Assumptions about climate policy play a major role in linking socioeconomic futures with forcing and climate outcomes. The paper presents the concept of shared climate policy assumptions as an important element of the new scenario framework. Shared climate policy assumptions capture key policy attributes such as the goals, instruments and obstacles of mitigation and adaptation measures, and introduce an important additional dimension to the scenario matrix architecture. They can be used to improve the comparability of scenarios in the scenario matrix. Shared climate policy assumptions should be designed to be policy relevant, and as a set to be broad enough to allow a comprehensive exploration of the climate change scenario space.