Workstream 1 | Workstream 2 | Workstream 3 | Other research areas, not included in the programme
Workstream 1 – led by Rachel Warren
Will deliver:
- estimates of the climatic consequences of defined climate policies (based on emissions pathways) and new "what if?" questions (based on temperature or concentration targets);
- estimates of damages and impacts under these defined policies and targets, and damages avoided by them, expressed in a variety of metrics, both physical and economic (e.g. "impacts tables"); and
- estimates of the economic characteristics of the inferred mitigation strategies (e.g. in terms of carbon prices) and of their economic consequences (e.g. abatement costs).
Workstream 2 – led by Jason Lowe
Will deliver:
- the key information needed to characterise dangerous climate change and to translate the findings into a policy relevant form.
The research outputs include:
- customer reports to Defra as new results are obtained;
- peer reviewed journal articles on new results;
- regular stakeholder briefings on results and their mitigation significance; and
- active web presence of working papers and workshops.
| Bid science category | Project |
|---|---|
| Risk of dangerous climate change | Annual statement of current understanding of dangerous climate change |
| Extracting extremes in aggressive mitigation experiment | |
| Meta analysis of existing upper extreme sea level rise scenarios | |
| Simulating glaciers in a range of mitigation scenarios | |
| Synthesizing biological impacts of ocean acidification | |
| Risk of ongoing ocean acidification | Generation of global ocean acidification and impact scenarios |
| Relationship between stabilisation level, marginal abatement costs and damage cost of climate change and the implications of multi gas reduction strategies | Implications of technological development and regional climate damage costs for international climate policy |
| Impacts tables for forcing stabilisation scenarios with different CO2/nonCO2 splits | |
| Risk of irreversible overshooting and the implications for achievability of emissions pathways in the long run | Improved assessment of likelihood of exceeding given temperature targets and recovery times |
| Changes in Biodiversity and their reversibility | |
| For different regions and society groups, what is considered an acceptable risk of climate change impacts? And What level of global climate change should be avoided? |
Narrative descriptions of potential consequences of climate change under defined rates of change |
| Climate change and food security | |
| Assessment of the risks of climate change impact at different levels of climate change | |
| Climate change impacts under high-end global temperature rise – regional case studies for India, China and US | |
| What actions are needed in the short and medium terms to keep global temperatures below specified targets? Is any overshooting viable? | Initial Investigation of the potential necessity of strong biofuel and/or avoided deforestation policies to keep global temperature below specified targets |
| Assessment of Mitigation scenarios, technologies and hedges against uncertainty | |
| How wide is the "window" for concentration overshoot | |
| Extracting mitigation policy relevance from IPCC AR5 GCM experiments | Repeating Workstream 1 calculations for AR5 and other new scenarios |
Workstream 3 – led by Nigel Arnell and Vicky Pope
Will deliver:
- the integration of AVOID into a suitable LWEC programme;
- close links developed with other international initiatives (characterised by representation on committees, coordinated research programmes etc);
- cross-disciplinary research projects identified, scoped and implemented;
- significant additional funding attracted for AVOID research programme; and
- high-profile agenda-setting paper published in the international literature.
Other research areas, not included in the programme
| Bid science category | Project |
|---|---|
| Risk of dangerous climate change | Estimation of very fine (model) scale weather extremes |
| Estimate of the impacts of changes in regional extremes | |
| Estimate of the economic and damage costs of changes in regional extremes | |
| Projecting dangerous changes in sea level extremes in policy hotspots | |
| New estimates of the costs of coastal adaptation | |
| Examining the temporary resiliency of Greenland ice sheet | |
| Recalculation of sea level and impacts scenarios using output of ICE2SEA and similar projects | |
| Improved methane and carbon release modelling | |
| Calculation of impacts and damage costs during a THC slowdown/ shutdown event | |
| Risk of ongoing ocean acidification | Providing ocean acidification scenarios and impacts in shelf seas |
| Relationship between stabilisation level, marginal abatement costs and damage cost of climate change and the implications of multi gas reduction strategies | Construction of an E3MG emulator |
| Structural uncertainty in abatement cost models | |
| Uncertainty in impact costs | |
| Improving the damage functions using AR4 and AVOID results | |
| Updating the economic outputs of CIAS/E3MG | |
| New cost estimates for different CO2/nonCO2 splits | |
| Development of new climate metrics for short lived radiatively active species | |
| Modelling the affect of GHG mitigation measures on Air Quality | |
| Risk of irreversible overshooting and the implications for achievability of emissions pathways in the long run | Understanding the causes of irreversibility and slow climate recovery, and their costs |
| Temporary resiliency of human and infrastructure systems | |
| Response of Ecosystems Functions and Biodiversity | |
| Further assessment of changes in biodiversity | |
| For different regions and society groups, what is considered an acceptable risk of climate change impacts? and thus... And What level of global climate change should be avoided? |
Connection of new modules to CIAS |
| What actions are needed in the short and medium terms to keep global temperatures below specified targets? Is any overshooting viable? | Extended Investigation of the potential necessity of strong biofuel and/or avoided deforestation policies to keep global temperature below specified targets (Lead RW) |
| Investigation of mitigation costs of land use change actions, in particular the economics of REDD within the CIAS system | |
| Scope and effect of negative carbon emissions | |
| Temporary resiliency: characterising system hysteresis and reversibility time-scales | |
| Extracting mitigation policy relevance from IPCC AR5 GCM experiments | |
| Emissions measurement issues and links to air quality | Improving emissions measurement for inclusion in emissions trading schemes |
| Extending CIAS into a graphical policy maker tool | CLIMASCOPE : An assessment tool for analysing vulnerability to future climate change, based on the integrated assessment model, CIAS |
