DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5886911
title: AR6 Scenarios Database

description: The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA.<<< click here.

As part of the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report (AR6), authors from Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change undertook a comprehensive exercise to collect and assess quantitative, model-based scenarios related to the mitigation of climate change.

Building on previous assessments, such as those undertaken for the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) and the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15), the calls for AR6 for scenarios have been expanded and includes economy-wide GHG emissions, energy, and sectoral scenarios from global to national scales, thus more broadly supporting the assessment across multiple chapters (see Annex III, Part 2 of the WGIII report for more details).

The compilation and assessment of the scenario ensemble was conducted by authors of the IPCC AR6 report, and the resource is hosted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) as part of a cooperation agreement with Working Group III of the IPCC. The scenario ensemble contains 3,131 quantitative scenarios with data on socio-economic development, greenhouse gas emissions, and sectoral transformations across energy, land use, transportation, buildings and industry. These scenarios derive from 191 unique modelling frameworks, 95+ model families that are either globally comprehensive, national, multi-regional or sectoral.

The criteria for submission included that the scenario is presented in a peer-reviewed journal accepted for publication no later than October 11th, 2021, or published in a report determined by the IPCC WG III Bureau to be eligible grey literature by the same date. The AR6 scenario database is documented in Annex III.2 of the Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group III. For the purpose of the assessment, scenarios have been grouped in various categories relating to, among other things, climate outcomes, overshoot, technology availability and policy assumptions.

The AR6 Scenarios Database is jointly published by the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium & International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA.<<< click here.

For ease of use, the database is provided as multiple files:




Filename
Description
Region coverage
Uncompressed Size (MB)




Standard files for assessment
 
 
 


AR6_Scenarios_Database_World_v1.1.csv
All data reported for the World region, primarily from integrated assessment models (IAMs), as well as variables from the climate assessment 
World only
353


AR6_Scenarios_Database_R5_regions_v1.1.csv
All data reported and aggregated to R5 regions, primarily from IAMs.
5 global regions
847


AR6_Scenarios_Database_R6_regions_v1.1.csv
All data reported and aggregated to R6 regions (as preferred by IPCC), primarily from IAMs.
6 global regions
408


AR6_Scenarios_Database_R10_regions_v1.1.csv
All data reported and aggregated to R10 regions, primarily from IAMs.
10 global regions
1,266


AR6_Scenarios_Database_ISO3_v1.1.csv
Ass data reported at the country level, primarily from national integrated assessment and energy systems models, but also IAMs for major countries.
Country level
1,155


AR6_Scenarios_Database_metadata_indicators_v1.1.xlsx
Wide range of categorical and numerical indicators calculated for each model-scenario.
Primarily world data
3


Additional "climate assessment" files
New in v1.1
 
 


AR6_Scenarios_Database_World_ALL_CLIMATE_v1.1.csv
Same as World snapshot above, but with all the climate assessment data for MAGICC and FaIR models included
World only
3,006


AR6_Climate_Diagnostics_CICERO-SCM_v1.1.csv
Climate assessment data for the CICERO-SCM model
World only
743


AR6_Climate_Diagnostics_metadata_indicators_v1.1.xlsx
Full set of categorical and numerical indicators relating to the climate assessment, calculated for each model-scenario
World only
2


AR6_historical_emissions.csv
Historical CO2 and GHGs for world region used in climate assessment
World only
0.01




The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA. The license permits use of the scenario ensemble for scientific research and science communication, but restricts redistribution of substantial parts of the data. Please refer to the FAQ and legal code for more information.

In addition to the data you may find more relevant information and cite one of the relevant chapters of the WG III report.

If working with global or regional (R6, R10) data:



Keywan Riahi, Roberto Schaeffer, et al. Mitigation Pathways Compatible with Long-Term Goals, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/


If working with national data (ISO region data):



Franck Lecocq, Harald Winkler, et al. Mitigation and development pathways in the near- to mid-term, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/


If you find the metadata files particularly useful:



Celine Guivarch, Elmar Kriegler, Joana Portugal Pereira, et al. Annex III: Scenarios and Modelling Methods, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/


Scenarios data also supports analysis in the Summary for Policy Makers, Technical Summary and Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12 and 15.

Climate assessment of global emissions pathways

The climate assessment of the long-term global emissions scenarios was undertaken as part of the Chapter 3 assessment. The workflow is available at https://github.com/iiasa/climate-assessment and published in Kikstra et al. 2022. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report WGIII climate assessment of mitigation pathways: from emissions to global temperatures. Geoscientific Model Development https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-471. Scripts for this assessment are at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7304736 

For these purposes, the full climate assessment data is provided, as documented in the table above.

Release notes for v1.1

Following feedback and identification of some issues between the versions available to authors in preparation of the published report and the v1.0 public release, updates are made to v1.1.Changes made here are made with the intention of facilitating and improving the reproducibility of the IPCC report. There are no resulting corrections to the report and its findings, as these issues were identified by authors and manually addressed. Full list of release notes is published on the Downloads page https://data.ene.iiasa.ac.at/ar6/#/downloads 

The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA.<<< click here.