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Modeling climate change feedbacks and adaptation responses: recent approaches and shortcomings

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Abstract

This paper offers a critical review of modeling practice in the field of integrated assessment of climate change and ways forward. Past efforts in integrated assessment have concentrated on developing baseline trajectories of emissions and mitigation scenario analyses. A key missing component in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) is the representation of climate impacts and adaptation responses. In this paper, we identify key biases that are introduced when climate impacts and adaptation responses are omitted from the analysis and review the state of modeling studies that attempt to capture these feedbacks. A common problem in these IAM studies is the lack of connection with empirical studies. We therefore also review the state of the empirical work on climate impacts and identify ways that this connection could be improved.

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Notes

  1. See Agrawala et al. (2011) for a comparison of the two studies.

  2. Agriculture, sea-level rise, other market sectors, health, non-market amenity impacts, human settlements and ecosystems, extreme events and catastrophes.

  3. See Agrawala et al. (2011) for a comparison of how damages were represented in the two models.

  4. E.g., the ADAGE model (Ross 2007), which divides the U.S. economy into 9 regions, runs only to 2050. IGEM (Jorgenson and Wilcoxen 1993; Jorgenson et al. 2004) runs out to 2100 but models the U.S. as a single region with sectoral detail.

  5. Agriculture, forestry, water resources, energy consumption, sea level rise, ecosystems, human health (morbidity and mortality from diarrheal disease, vector-borne diseases, heat stress), and tropical cyclones.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Karen Fisher-Vanden

  2. Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Ian Sue Wing

  3. OECD Environment Directorate, Paris, France

    Elisa Lanzi

  4. Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

    David Popp

Authors
  1. Karen Fisher-Vanden
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  2. Ian Sue Wing
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  3. Elisa Lanzi
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  4. David Popp
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Correspondence to Karen Fisher-Vanden.

Additional information

This article is part of a Special Issue on “Improving the Assessment and Valuation of Climate Change Impacts for Policy and Regulatory Analysis” edited by Alex L. Marten, Kate C. Shouse, and Robert E. Kopp.

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Fisher-Vanden, K., Sue Wing, I., Lanzi, E. et al. Modeling climate change feedbacks and adaptation responses: recent approaches and shortcomings. Climatic Change 117, 481–495 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0644-9

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