Integrated assessment of climate change and climate policy analysis

Integrated assessment of climate change and climate policy analysis was a core research activity in 2013, providing a focus for collaborative research with other research programs at IIASA, and with the larger international science community.

Integrated assessment © maxkrasnov | iStock

Integrated assessment

Important ground work in the integrated assessment area was the successful coupling of the MESSAGE model with ESM’s GLOBIOM agro-forestry modeling framework.

The newly coupled modeling framework allows the assessment of:

  • critical feedbacks for land-use changes from an increased use of bio-energy
  • the greenhouse gas intensity of management activities in the forest and agricultural sectors. 

Another important feature of the integrated assessment modeling (IAM) framework was the coupling of MESSAGE to the GAINS air pollution framework which was developed by the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program. The coupled new model was used in 2013 for the joint assessment of costs and benefits of air pollution and climate change policies.

Fifth Assessment Report, IPCC

In terms of impact, the results of all Energy (ENE) Program research activities underpin the transformational pathways analysis in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is expected be published in spring 2014. More

International model intercomparison projects

The Energy (ENE) Program has been at the forefront of several research efforts for the wider science community. These include the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and two international model inter-comparison projects that were successfully completed in 2013 (EMF27 and AMPERE).  More

Community database infrastructure for major international energy initiatives

Given IIASA’s role as host of the datasets for the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) and Global Energy Assessment (GEA), the Energy (ENE) and Transitions to New Technologies (TNT) programs in 2013 developed a more sophisticated community database infrastructure. More

Achieving the two-degree warming target

A paper by Energy (ENE) program researchers describes how different GHG emissions levels in 2020 would impact the feasibility of achieving the 2˚C target, based on the Copenhagen Accord of 2009, in the long-term. More


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Last edited: 30 June 2015

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Keywan Riahi

Program Director and Principal Research Scholar Energy, Climate, and Environment Program

Principal Research Scholar Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group - Energy, Climate, and Environment Program

Principal Research Scholar Pollution Management Research Group - Energy, Climate, and Environment Program

Principal Research Scholar Sustainable Service Systems Research Group - Energy, Climate, and Environment Program

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