A comprehensive comparison of computer-based simulations from all over the world will start this week. Sectors ranging from ecosystems to agriculture to water supplies an health will be scrutinized in a common framework using several models provided by more then twenty research groups working at this international project.

“The project will help to fill a sore gap in the IPCC’s report,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, PIK director. Until now, there have been comprehensive model comparisons for the physics of the climate system as well as for the economy of climate protection and for climate impacts on specific sectors. To address all climate impacts at once is both an ambitious and necessary intent, says Schellnhuber. “It provides an essential strengthening of the grounds for the 2014 IPCC report”.

Working Group III co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer from PIK also explicitly encouraged the impact intercomparison project. “A sound impact analysis is of high relevance for mitigation and adaptation assessment as well”, says Edenhofer. “It enables us to do cost-benefit estimates that are critical for providing decision-makers with the information they need. We therefore strongly endorse the impact model intercomparison effort.” Working group III of the IPCC focuses on climate change mitigation.

Source: Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research (PIK)

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