FUTURA: Future of Climate Change Scenarios of the Earth System, Impacts and Socio-Economic Outcomes for Assessment and AND Society
For the first time, all major European modelling and infrastructure efforts are coordinated within a dedicated project to develop and deploy a sustainable and unified system for delivering future emissions and land-use scenarios, and climate and impact projections. This system is referred to hereafter as the’climate pathways system’. It is designed to support climate research, international assessments, and climate policy for the coming decades. FUTURA explores how to design a new cyclical scenario generation protocol built from process-resolving models complemented by emulator and AI approaches. It shifts from causal-chain modelling workflows to a unified system that unifies multi-annual process-driven iterations complemented by the ability to run fast annual iterations. We address how to best align this system with policy timeframes, and how to effectively leverage the model and data multiverse to advance understanding while supporting researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. The FUTURA climate pathways system represents a significant step towards the sustained and responsive delivery of climate projections in support of climate assessment and policy.

