PNNL

Abstract

The scientific community is developing new integrated global, regional, and sectoral scenarios to facilitate interdisciplinary research and assessment to explore the range of possible future climates and related physical changes could pose to human and natural systems; how these could interact with social, economic, and environmental development pathways; the degree to which mitigation and adaptation policies can avoid and reduce those risks; the costs and benefits of various policy mixes; residual impacts under alternative pathways; and the relationship with sustainable development. This paper provides the background to, and process of, developing the conceptual framework for these scenarios, described in three other papers in this Special Issue (van Vuuren et al.; O'Neill et al.; Kriegler et al.). The paper also discusses research needs to further develop and apply this framework. The goal is to encourage climate change researchers from a broad range of perspectives and disciplines to work together to develop policy-relevant scenarios and explore the implications of different possible futures for the challenges and opportunities human and natural systems could face with increasing climate change.