# Presentation: 403681

## Emission Scenarios:  Report 2.1

**November 14, 2005**
**Climate Change Science Program Workshop:**
**Climate Science in Support of Decision Making**
**John C. Houghton**
**Office of Biological and Environmental Research****Office of Science****U.S. Department of Energy**

## Product 2.1 – Emission Scenarios

- Updating scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations, in collaboration with the CCTP (Part A).
- Review of integrated scenario development and application (Part B).

- Topic

- Completion

- Within 2 years.

## Schedule

- Feb 2005 	Prospectus posted on CCSP web site for public comment (30 days)
- Nov 2005 	Final prospectus posted on the CCSP web site
- Dec 31, 2005 Draft #1 provided to peer reviewers (30 days)
- Mar 2006 	Draft #2 made available for public comment (45 days)
- Jun 2006 	FACA Advisory Committee meeting to review responses
- Jul 2006 	Draft #3 submitted to CCSP interagency committee for review and processing through Administration
- Aug 2006 	Final product posted on CCSP web site

## What is a Scenario?

- A scenario is a description of potential future conditions, which is developed to inform decision-making under uncertainty.
- Scenarios are images of the future, or alternative futures. They are neither predictions nor forecasts. (IPCC SRES, pg. 62)
- A scenario is a coherent, internally consistent, and plausible description of a possible future state of the world. (IPCC TAR WG2, p. 149

##  Study Design

- Four stabilization scenarios roughly consistent with 450 ppmv through 750 ppmv CO2, along with one reference case.
- Long-term (many century) stabilization; study period through 2100.
- Stabilize total radiative forcing from CO2, N2O, CH4, HFCs, PFCs, and SF6.
- Assumptions (e.g., population, economic growth, technological change) developed individually by the modeling teams.
- All models assume existing climate programs (Kyoto, U.S. intensity target).
- Three integrated assessment modeling teams.
- New analysis rather than synthesis of existing studies

**Part A**

## Products

- Products will focus on:
- Emissions, concentrations, radiative forcing
- Energy systems – quantities, prices, characteristics
- Economics
- Land use and land use change
- Summary of the scenarios for interested non-specialists.
- Technical report that provides documentation and discussion of the scenarios.
- Cross-model data set.
- Aggregate-level results (e.g., emissions trajectories, energy contributions over time, and population trajectories)
- Modelers will make additional information available as appropriate
- Disaggregated by U.S. and global results

**Part A**

## Audience

- Decision-makers and analysts to better understand the potential characteristics of futures with stabilization constraints
- Technology planners for timing, quantity, cost, resource utilization context
- Climate modelers for sample emission inputs
- Impacts modelers for information on future climate, demographic, resource, economic parameters, etc.
- Other activities that create emission scenarios (c.f. subsequent presentation by de La Chesnaye)

**Part A**

## Integrated Assessment Modeling

**Integrated Assessment Models:**
- Computer-based models that combine, into an integrated framework, the socioeconomic and natural processes and systems that define the human influence on, and interactions with, the global climate.

**Example: MIT Integrated Assessment Approach**

## Participating Models

- EPPA (MIT)
- General equilibrium framework; detailed earth systems component.
- MERGE (Stanford/EPRI)
- General equilibrium framework; full intertemporal optimization.
- MiniCAM (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
- Partial equilibrium framework; detailed energy sector representation.

**Part A**

## Review of Integrated Scenario Development and Application

**Part B**

- Emissions scenarios
- Climate-change scenarios
- Impacts scenarios
- Socio-economic scenarios

##  Objectives

- Review and evaluate how global-change scenarios have been defined, developed, implemented, communicated, and used
- Review specific past scenario development and application efforts
- Identify and assess key decisions, issues, and challenges
- Inform preparation and application of future scenarios

**Part B**

## Products

- Report of findings
- Summary for non-specialists

**Part B**

## Audience

- All participants in the integrated scenario development and application process, e.g.,
- Analysts charged with producing scenarios for particular users and purposes
- Designers and managers of assessment, planning, or decision support activities
- Climate modelers, integrated-assessment modelers
- Impacts researchers
- Technology planners
- Decision-makers who must use or interpret scenarios or scenario-based assessments

**Part B**

## Scenario Activities to be Reviewed

- IPCC Emissions Scenarios (IS92, SRES)
- US National Assessment
- Climate scenarios
- Socio-economic scenarios
- Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
- UK Climate Impacts Program
- Plus other smaller-scale activities in private and public sector ...

**Part B**

## Issues to be Examined

- Relationship between intended use/audience and scenario design
- Single-purpose vs. general-purpose scenarios
- Representation and communication of uncertainty in scenarios
- Scenario process: role of experts and stakeholders
- Role of scenarios in assessment design

**Part B**

## Lead Authors

- CHAIR:  Professor Edward **Parson**, Professor of Law, Associate Professor of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan
- 	Dr. Virginia **Burkett**, chief of the Forest Ecology Branch at the National Wetlands Research Center of the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior
- 	Professor Karen **Fisher-Vanden**, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College
- 	Professor David **Keith**, Professor of Economics, Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, and Canada Research Chair in Energy and the Environment at the University of Calgary, Alberta; and Adjunct Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University.
- 	Dr. Linda **Mearns**, Director of the Weather and Climate Impact Assessment Initiative, NCAR
- 	Mr. Hugh **Pitcher**, Staff Scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a collaboration between PNNL and the University of Maryland on the College Park
- 	Dr. Cynthia **Rosenzweig**, Senior Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
- 	Professor Mort **Webster**, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

**Part B**