Representative Agricultural Pathways and Scenarios for Regional Integrated Assessment of Climate Change Impacts, Vulnerability, and Adaptation

Abstract

The global change research community has recognized that new pathway and scenario concepts are needed to implement impact and vulnerability assessment where precise prediction is not possible, and also that these scenarios need to be logically consistent across local, regional, and global scales (Moss et al., 2008, 2010). For global climate models, representative concentration pathways (RCPs) have been developed that provide a range of time-series of atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations into the future (Moss et al., 2008, 2010; van Vuuren et al., 2012a). For impact and vulnerability assessment, new socio-economic pathway and scenario concepts have also been developed (Kriegler, 2012; van Vuuren et al., 2012b), with leadership from the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC).