Representing Socio-Economic Uncertainty in Human System Models

When the 2015 Paris Agreement set a long-term goal of keeping global warming “well below two degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels” to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, it did not specify how its nearly 200 signatory nations could collectively achieve that goal. Each nation was left to its own devices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in alignment with the 2°C target. Now a new modeling strategy developed at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change that explores hundreds of potential future development pathways provides new insights on the energy and technology choices needed for the world to meet that target.

Described in a study appearing in the journal Earth’s Future, the new strategy combines two well-known computer modeling techniques to scope out the energy and technology choices needed over the coming decades to reduce emissions sufficiently to achieve the Paris goal.

Read the full post on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change web site

Open access article: Representing Socio-Economic Uncertainty in Human System Models, by Jennifer Morris, John Reilly, Sergey Paltsev, Andrei Sokolov, Kenneth Cox.