Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Co-use of existing scenario sets to extend and quantify the shared socioeconomic pathways

Published inClimatic Change
Publication date2018
Abstract

More often than not, assessments of future climate risks are based on future climatic conditions superimposed on current socioeconomic conditions only. The new IPCC-guided alternative global development trends, the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), have the potential to enhance the integration of future socioeconomic conditions—in the form of socioeconomic scenarios—within assessments of future climate risks. Being global development pathways, the SSPs lack regional and sectoral details. To increase their suitability in sectoral and/or regional studies and their relevance for local stakeholders, the SSPs have to be extended. We propose here a new method to extend the SSPs that makes use of existing scenario studies, the (re)use of which has been underestimated so far. Our approach lies in a systematic matching of multiple scenario sets that facilitates enrichment of the global SSPs with regional and sectoral information, in terms of both storylines and quantitative projections. We apply this method to develop extended SSPs of human vulnerability in Europe and to quantify them for a number of key indicators at the sub-national level up to 2050, based on the co-use of the matched scenarios' quantitative outputs. Results show that such a method leads to internally consistent extended SSPs with detailed and highly quantified narratives that are tightly linked to global contexts. This method also provides multiple entry points where the relevance of scenarios to local stakeholders can be tested and strengthened. The extended SSPs can be readily employed to explore future populations' vulnerability to climate hazards under varying levels of socioeconomic development.

Keywords
  • Climate change
  • Scenarios
  • Shared socioeconomic pathways
  • Scenario Matching
  • Climate impacts
  • Europe
  • Vulnerability
  • Risk
Citation (ISO format)
ROHAT, Guillaume Thibaut et al. Co-use of existing scenario sets to extend and quantify the shared socioeconomic pathways. In: Climatic Change, 2018. doi: 10.1007/s10584-018-2318-8
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
Identifiers
ISSN of the journal0165-0009
482views
191downloads

Technical informations

Creation01/11/2018 21:11:00
First validation01/11/2018 21:11:00
Update time15/03/2023 13:10:06
Status update15/03/2023 13:10:05
Last indexation02/10/2024 21:59:07
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack