Making climate change scenarios more comprehensible: New interactive online toolkit

01/10/2018 – Climate change is happening in an interdependent concert with other processes of environmental, social, technical, economic, and cultural change. Within this context, global warming is projected in scenarios of what could happen, describing possible climate change futures. But what are climate change scenarios and how are they connected to socioeconomics, energy, land use, emissions, or climate impacts? The new interactive primer to climate change scenarios developed by the SENSES project at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) aims at explaining and visualizing these crucial basics.
Making climate change scenarios more comprehensible: New interactive online toolkit

“We can’t predict the future, but scenarios allow us to explore possible futures, the assumptions they depend upon, and the courses of action that could bring them about”, the now published interactive online primer on climate change scenarios gets started. This new toolkit uses user-centred scenario visualization tools, practical guidelines and manuals to make climate change knowledge more comprehensible for national and international climate policy makers, regional climate scenario users, and businesses. Climate change scenarios are used  to investigate causes and impacts of global warming. They explore “What can happen?” and even “What should happen?” given the fact that we are able to shape our future by limiting global warming to well below 2°C in line with the Paris Agreement.

Led by researchers at PIK, the SENSES project investigates potential socio-economic futures in the face of climate change and how this knowledge can be made accessible to a broader public. In collaboration with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Stockholm Environment Institute, the Wageningen University & Research and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, the projects aim is to develop tools and approaches to make the new generation of climate change scenarios more comprehensible for decision makers.

 

Weblink to the Primer: http://climatescenarios.org/primer/    

Weblink to the project website of SENSES: http://senses-project.org/