The final agreement of the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancún recognizes that global warming beyond 2°C above pre-industrial levels will be a major threat to human welfare and to ecosystems, thus deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required. The political discussion demands that decision makers and society are informed by the best available science on projected impacts and possible adaptation measures.
The goal of the European Communities' FP7 project IMPACT2C (Quantifying Projected Impacts Under 2°C Warming) is to systematically quantify climate impacts, vulnerabilities, risks and economic costs, as well as potential adaptive responses, at pan-European scale. A multi-disciplinary international expert team assesses these effects on water and energy supply, infrastructure, coasts, tourism, forestry, agriculture, ecosystems services, and health. The project also studies climate change impacts in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions outside Europe: Bangladesh, Africa, and the Maldives.
PIK will primarily contribute to climate change impact assessment in WP6, WP 7 and WP12,
and to a smaller also to WPs 3, 5.
The contribution of PIK scientists is to provide pan-European assessments of impacts on water resources, agriculture and ecosystems, and a vulnerability assessment for East and Sub-Saharan Africa (Nile and Niger river basins), both for a rise in global mean temperature by 2°C.