From emissions to climate impacts and back again

该研究金将开发一个开源和用户友好的简单气候模型，重点关注减缓气候变化的影响。简单的气候模型对于预测不同温室气体排放情景下全球气温的变化非常有用。与英国气象局（Met Office）和世界各地其他机构运行的最先进的气候模型不同，简单模型不需要大量昂贵的计算机资源和时间来输出结果。这意味着它们是支持气候减缓政策和决策的有力工具，因为它们提供了基于现有最佳科学的快速评估。在气候变化缓解评估中使用的简单气候模型（例如政府间气候变化专门委员会第三工作组报告中的模型）只是常规地计算工业化前以来的全球平均温度变化，作为气候变化的输出。虽然全球平均温度是一个有用的政策指标，而且易于传播，但它不能很好地描述对生活、生计和经济产生最大影响的气候变化。社会和自然界造成的损害和影响通常对热浪、干旱和极端降雨以及海平面上升的严重程度和频率更为敏感，而不是对全球平均温度更为敏感。这些产出与人类和自然生态系统更为相关，并进一步影响作物生产力和健康。这项研究将开发诸如此类的气候影响指标，用于一个简单的气候模型。这项研究将使决策者能够确定气候变化减缓政策除了对全球平均温度的影响之外的局部效益。该模型将在一个记录良好的互动网站上提供。该奖学金还将探索气候变化与能源系统之间的反馈，并首次将其应用到综合评估模型中。用于驱动简单气候模型的未来排放预测通常来自称为综合评估模型（iam）的经济和能源系统耦合模型。综合评估模型是用于确定可持续能源和经济发展途径以及报告能源政策决定对气候影响的工具。目前，在人工智能系统中，排放与气候变化之间的联系只有一个方向，即气候对能源供需有真实和明确的反馈（例如，如果夏季气温继续升高，对空调的需求就会增加）。该奖学金将寻求将这些现实世界气候对能源供应的影响纳入综合评估模型。当与简单的区域影响气候模型相结合时，它将提供能源系统决策对气候变化影响的更完整的图景。这项工作的一个关键焦点是模型开发将是开源的，解决了在综合评估模型中增加透明度的需求。该项目将利用两个IIASA项目（能源和生态系统服务与管理）的经验，在NERC和IIASA研究社区之间建立合作联系，并利用由英国一位确定的高级学者促进的网络建设活动，这些活动与IIASA现有的强大联系有关。

This fellowship will develop an open-source and user-friendly simple climate model focusing on the impacts of climate change mitigation. Simple climate models are incredibly useful for providing projections of how global temperatures might change under different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. Unlike the state-of-the-art climate models run by the Met Office and others around the world, simple models do not need vast amounts of expensive computer resource and time to output results. This means they are powerful tools for supporting policy and decision making on climate mitigation because they provide rapid assessments based on the best available science.Simple climate models used in climate change mitigation assessments (such as those in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Working Group 3 report) only routinely calculate the global mean temperature change since the pre-industrial as a climate change output. While global mean temperature is a useful policy metric and easily communicable, it is a poor description of changes in climate that have the greatest impacts on lives, livelihoods and the economy. Damages and impacts incurred by society and the natural world are typically more sensitive to the severity and frequency of heatwaves, droughts and extreme rainfall, and sea-level rise rather than global average temperature. These outputs are much more relevant for human and natural ecosystems, and further affect crop productivity and health. The research will develop climate impact metrics such as these for use in a simple climate model. This research will allow policymakers to determine the localised benefits of climate change mitigation policies besides the impact on global mean temperature. The model will be made available on a well-documented, interactive website.This fellowship will also explore the feedbacks between climate change and the energy system, implementing these into integrated assessment modelling for the first time. Future emissions projections that are used to drive simple climate models are often derived from coupled models of the economy and energy system called integrated assessment models (IAMs). Integrated assessment models are tools used to determine pathways to sustainable energy and economic development and to report the climate impact of energy policy decisions. Currently, the link from emissions to climate change in IAMs is in one direction only, where there are real and identified feedbacks from the climate on energy supply and demand (e.g. increased requirements for air conditioning should summer temperatures continue to increase). This fellowship will seek to include these real-world climate impacts on the energy supply into integrated assessment models. When combined with the simple regional impacts climate model, it will provide a much more complete picture of the climate change impacts of energy system decisions. One key focus of this work is that model development will be open-source, settling a demand for increased transparency in integrated assessment modelling.The project will build collaborative links between the NERC and IIASA research communities, leveraging experience from two IIASA programs (Energy, and Ecosystems Services and Management) and making use of networking building activities facilitated through an identified senior academic in the UK with existing strong IIASA links.