PNNL

Abstract

The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) were created to provide researchers from various climate change research communities with a consistent set of scenarios of the future1,2. The SSPs are five narratives of alternative futures that span a range of challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation absent additional interventions to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Because the narratives are qualitative in nature, they are open to quantitative interpretation. This has enabled a rich and growing quantitative SSP-based scenario literature from the integrated assessment modeling (IAM) community3. On the one hand, the resulting variety creates the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the range of possible futures consistent with the SSPs. Yet on the other hand, it raises the question of what drives the differences across the quantified scenarios. Reporting in Nature Climate Change, XYZ and colleagues show that CO2 emission estimates across the quantified SSP-based scenarios are most sensitive to assumptions about energy intensity and economic growth.