What is an Integrated Assessment Model and why do we use them?
Channel: Carbon Brief
Date: 2018-10-02

Working out the best ways to tackle climate change is one of the key challenges facing policymakers both today and in the decades ahead.

To inform these decisions, scientists and economists have developed a suite of tools known as “integrated assessment models” (IAMs). These models are used to answer central questions about climate change, from how the world could avoid 1.5C of global warming at the lowest cost, through to the implications of countries’ current pledges to cut emissions.

Carbon Brief spoke to Dr Joeri Rogelj, energy researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), a lecturer in climate change at Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute and a coordinating lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on 1.5C.

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