City-scale integrated assessment of climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) for climate change refers to a broad category of research approaches in climate change. Climate change is the most complicated global environmental problem. By the very nature of climate change, research has to be interdisciplinary and multifaceted. IAM is the mainstream methodological approach in climate change research. Most researchers in climate change utilize IAMs directly or indirectly. IAMs draw knowledge and strengths from various disciplines related to climate change; contributions from each discipline rely on the mathematical representations of certain relationships connected to climate change; disciplinary components are linked through a unified modeling platform(s). In particular, IAMs for climate change usually involve social-economic components as well as natural sciences components. The key linkages in IAM platforms are anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in climate systems and climate change impacts on social-economic systems. The outputs of IAMs are numerical simulation results based on assumptions, historical data, and scenario designs. IAMs are widely used in assessing various GHG mitigation policies and climate impacts. In fact, conclusions in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports are drawn substantially from numerous IAMs. IAMs for climate change started in the late 1980s. Since then, IAMs for climate change have developed into a full-fledged interdisciplinary research field that involves hundreds of models, thriving online resources, and thousands of academic publications and policy reports around the world. IAM for climate change, as an interdisciplinary research approach, has received recognition by mainstream disciplines. The Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) and the Regional Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (RICE)—two IAMs for climate change—are part of the core contributions in William Nordhaus’s Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2018.

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Integrated assessment of climate impacts and adaptation in the energy sector

Energy Economics ◽

10.1016/j.eneco.2014.07.003 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 46 ◽

pp. 531-538 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

Juan-Carlos Ciscar ◽

Paul Dowling

Keyword(s):

Integrated Assessment ◽

Energy Sector ◽

Climate Impacts

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Valuing climate impacts in integrated assessment models: the MIT IGSM

Climatic Change ◽

10.1007/s10584-012-0635-x ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 117 (3) ◽

pp. 561-573 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

John Reilly ◽

Sergey Paltsev ◽

Ken Strzepek ◽

Noelle E. Selin ◽

Yongxia Cai ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Integrated Assessment ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Integrated Assessment Models

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Public Outreach and Interactive Learning with En-ROADS Global Energy and Climate Simulator

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7334 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sibel Eker ◽

Lori Siegel ◽

Charles Jones ◽

John Sterman ◽

Florian Kapmeier ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Carbon Cycle ◽

System Dynamics ◽

Integrated Assessment ◽

Radiative Forcing ◽

Climate Model ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Time Step ◽

Integrated Assessment Models ◽

Carbon Transfer ◽

Outreach And Education

<p>Simple climate models enable not only rapid simulation of a large number of climate scenarios, especially in connection with the integrated assessment models of economy and environment, but also provide chances for outreach and education. En-ROADS, (Energy Rapid Overview and Decision Support)[1], is a publicly available, online policy simulation model designed to complement integrated assessment models for rapid simulation of climate solutions. En-ROADS is a globally aggregated energy-economy-climate model based on a simple climate model, and supports outreach and education about the causes and effects of climate change.&#160; It has an intuitive user interface and runs essentially instantly on ordinary laptops and tablets, providing policymakers, other leaders, educators, and the public with the ability to learn for themselves about the likely consequences of energy and climate policies and uncertainties.</p><p>&#160;</p><p>En-ROADS is a behavioral system dynamics model consisting of a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations solved numerically from 1990-2100, with a time step of one-eighth year. En-ROADS extends the C-ROADS model, which has been used extensively by officials and policymakers around the world to inform positions of parties to the UNFCCC[2][3]. In En-ROADS&#8217; climate module, the resulting emissions from the energy system, from forestry and land use, and carbon removal technologies, determine the atmospheric concentrations of each GHG, radiative forcing, and climate impacts including global surface temperature anomaly, heat and carbon transfer between the surface and deep ocean, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. It is calibrated to fit historical data of temperature change and carbon cycle elements, as well as the projections within the RCP-SSP framework. Both En-ROADS and C-ROADS are further developed to account for the details of the terrestrial carbon cycle.</p><p>&#160;</p><p>&#160;</p><p>&#160;</p><p>&#160;</p><div><br><div> <p>[1] https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html.</p> </div> <div> <p>[2] Sterman J, Fiddaman T, Franck TR, Jones A, McCauley S, Rice P, et al. Climate interactive: the C-ROADS climate policy model. System Dynamics Review 2013 <strong>28</strong> (3): 295&#8211;305</p> </div> <div> <p>[3] Sterman JD, Fiddaman T, Franck T, Jones A, McCauley S, Rice P, et al. Management flight simulators to support climate negotiations. Environmental Modelling & Software 2013, <strong>44:</strong> 122-135.</p> </div> </div>

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Embracing dynamic complexity in climate economics: The DSK Agent-based Integrated Assessment Modelling

10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-18055 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Claudia Wieners ◽

Francesco Lamperti ◽

Andrea Roventini ◽

Roberto Buizza

Keyword(s):

Climate Policy ◽

Integrated Assessment ◽

Multiple Equilibria ◽

Banking Sector ◽

Industrial Sector ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Assessment Model ◽

Dynamic Complexity ◽

Abatement Costs ◽

Agent Based

<p>Integrated Assessment Models are a key tool to search and evaluate climate policies - i.e. a set of measures best suited to avoid the worst of climate change without &#8220;harming the economy&#8221; too much.&#160;<br>Climate action &#181;(t) is typically portrayed as coming at a cost (relative to a no-policy case) C(&#181;), where C is a positive, monotonously increasing function.&#160;<br>However, this representation ignores economic dynamics. For instance, it assumes that CO2 abatement costs today are independent from efforts done last year, whereas in reality, previous investments in infrastructure or knowledge will have effects on abatement and abatement costs in the future. More generally speaking, the economy is a complex system of interacting players, capable of path-dependent behaviour, multiple equilibria or out-of-equilibrium dynamics, and transitions between states, and climate policy measures (or climate impacts) targeting some actors can affect the whole system.&#160;</p><p>Agent-based modelling has in recent years emerged as a tool to break the constraints imposed by generalised equilibrium models underlying most IAMs. Agent-based models directly simulate the activities of diverse interacting agents, rather than making assumptions of the aggregate behaviour of groups of agents.&#160;</p><p>Here, we present an agent-based Integrating Assessment Model, the Dystopian Schumpter-Keynes (DSK) model. It contains an industrial sector with interacting machine and consumption good firms, a banking sector, a government, and an electricity supplier, coupled to a climate module. The model has been used, among other things, to investigate how different types of climate impacts propagate through the economy. In this presentation, we focus on climate policy. In particular, we investigate<br>1. &#160;which policy tools, or combination of tools, are effective at bringing about a sufficiently rapid decarbonisation. Is a uniform carbon tax really sufficient to cause a green transition?&#160;<br>2. &#160;what will be the side effects on the economy. Will there be ongoing strain on the economy, or will costs be transitional - potentially even with long-term benefits?&#160;</p>

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Shutting Down the Thermohaline Circulation

The American Economic Review ◽

10.1257/aer.p20161102 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 106 (5) ◽

pp. 602-606 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

David Anthoff ◽

Francisco Estrada ◽

Richard S. J. Tol

Keyword(s):

Integrated Assessment ◽

Climate Models ◽

Thermohaline Circulation ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Climatic Changes ◽

Climate Impacts ◽

Integrated Assessment Model ◽

Assessment Model ◽

Human Welfare ◽

Positive Effects

Past climatic changes were caused by a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation. We use results from experiments with three climate models to show that the expected cooling due to a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation is less in magnitude than the expected warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The integrated assessment model FUND and a meta-analysis of climate impacts are used to evaluate the change in human welfare. We find modest but by and large positive effects on human welfare since a slowdown of the thermohaline circulation implies decelerated warming.

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