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    The representative concentration pathways: An overview
    (Heidelberg : Springer, 2011) van Vuuren, Detlef P.; Edmonds, Jae; Kainuma, Mikiko; Riahi, Keywan; Thomson, Allison; Hibbard, Kathy; Hurtt, George C.; Kram, Tom; Krey, Volker; Lamarque, Jean-Francois; Masui, Toshihiko; Meinshausen, Malte; Nakicenovic, Nebojsa; Smith, Steven J.; Rose, Steven K.
    This paper summarizes the development process and main characteristics of the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), a set of four new pathways developed for the climate modeling community as a basis for long-term and near-term modeling experiments. The four RCPs together span the range of year 2100 radiative forcing values found in the open literature, i.e. from 2.6 to 8.5 W/m2. The RCPs are the product of an innovative collaboration between integrated assessment modelers, climate modelers, terrestrial ecosystem modelers and emission inventory experts. The resulting product forms a comprehensive data set with high spatial and sectoral resolutions for the period extending to 2100. Land use and emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases are reported mostly at a 0.5 × 0.5 degree spatial resolution, with air pollutants also provided per sector (for well-mixed gases, a coarser resolution is used). The underlying integrated assessment model outputs for land use, atmospheric emissions and concentration data were harmonized across models and scenarios to ensure consistency with historical observations while preserving individual scenario trends. For most variables, the RCPs cover a wide range of the existing literature. The RCPs are supplemented with extensions (Extended Concentration Pathways, ECPs), which allow climate modeling experiments through the year 2300. The RCPs are an important development in climate research and provide a potential foundation for further research and assessment, including emissions mitigation and impact analysis.
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    A new scenario framework for climate change research: The concept of shared climate policy assumptions
    (Heidelberg : Springer, 2014) Kriegler, Elmar; Edmonds, Jae; Hallegatte, Stéphane; Ebi, Kristie L.; Kram, Tom; Riahi, Keywan; Winkler, Harald; van Vuuren, Detlef P.
    The new scenario framework facilitates the coupling of multiple socioeconomic reference pathways with climate model products using the representative concentration pathways. This will allow for improved assessment of climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation. Assumptions about climate policy play a major role in linking socioeconomic futures with forcing and climate outcomes. The paper presents the concept of shared climate policy assumptions as an important element of the new scenario framework. Shared climate policy assumptions capture key policy attributes such as the goals, instruments and obstacles of mitigation and adaptation measures, and introduce an important additional dimension to the scenario matrix architecture. They can be used to improve the comparability of scenarios in the scenario matrix. Shared climate policy assumptions should be designed to be policy relevant, and as a set to be broad enough to allow a comprehensive exploration of the climate change scenario space.