A New Science for Future

Building on concepts from Science & Technology Studies, Simon David Hirsbrunner investigates practices and infrastructures of computer modeling and science communication in climate impact research. The book characterizes how scientists calculate future climate risks in computer models and scenarios, but also how they circulate their insights and make them accessible and comprehensible to others. By discussing elements such as infrastructures, visualizations, models, software and data, the chapters show how computational modeling practices are currently changing in light of digital transformations and expectations for an open science. A number of inventive research devices are proposed to capture both the fluidity and viscosity of contemporary digital technology.

Lessons learned from the co-production of climate services in India, Tanzania and Peru: climate capacity building the EPICC way

<p>EPICC (East Africa Peru India Climate Capacities) is a large interdisciplinary project on the co-production of user-oriented climate services in India, Peru and Tanzania, executed by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). It focuses on regional climate and hydrological systems and their interactions with agricultural livelihoods, human migration and security. To bridge the gap between research and its application at various levels of political decision-making or in the private sector, climates services are identified and co-produced with local partners and stakeholders and tailored to their respective needs and priorities.</p><p>Capacity building and knowledge transfer are fundamental components of EPICC, with the aim to strengthen resilience against climate impacts. Actions include workshops, seminars and trainings in the partner countries, guest stays at PIK and, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more virtual events. The presentation builds on a rich portfolio of experiences and lessons learned throughout the first project phase (4 years), including an overview of how the team adapted to the new realities in international stakeholder exchange during the pandemic and the challenges that came along with this. The presentation also discusses cultural differences in communication and collaboration the project team has experienced.</p><p>As a practical example, the visualization of climate information for Peru, Tanzania and India on the web portal ClimateImpactsOnline / KlimafolgenOnline is presented. Visualization is considered to be a key technology for analysing and communicating climate information in a user-friendly, interactive and accessible way. As a first step, the needs of different types of users of climate information had to be identified, leading to tailor-made visualization solutions for both historic and future climate and climate impacts as well as current year weather conditions compared to historic climatology. In test sessions, the applicability of the visualized information was tested with local experts and feedback was integrated into the visualization portal. The presenters will share the challenges they had to face during the process and how they envision a sustainable use of project results.</p><p>The EPICC project is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI: www.international-climate-initiative.com). The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German Bundestag. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is leading the execution of the project together with its project partners, the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD).</p>

Continuous national gross domestic product (GDP) time series for 195 countries: past observations (1850–2005) harmonized with future projections according to the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (2006–2100)

Gross domestic product (GDP) represents a widely used metric to compare economic development across time and space. GDP estimates have been routinely assembled only since the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, making comparisons with prior periods cumbersome or even impossible. In recent years various efforts have been put forward to re-estimate national GDP for specific years in the past centuries and even millennia, providing new insights into past economic development on a snapshot basis. In order to make this wealth of data utilizable across research disciplines, we here present a first continuous and consistent data set of GDP time series for 195 countries from 1850 to 2009, based mainly on data from the Maddison Project and other population and GDP sources. The GDP data are consistent with Penn World Tables v8.1 and future GDP projections from the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), and are freely available at http://doi.org/10.5880/pik.2018.010 (Geiger and Frieler, 2018). To ease usability, we additionally provide GDP per capita data and further supplementary and data description files in the online archive. We utilize various methods to handle missing data and discuss the advantages and limitations of our methodology. Despite known shortcomings this data set provides valuable input, e.g., for climate impact research, in order to consistently analyze economic impacts from pre-industrial times to the future.

The research of climate impacts on society and economy during the Little Ice Age in Europe. An overview

This paper focusses on historical climate impact research, one of the branches of historical climatology with an emphasis on the Little Ice Age. It provides examples of the theoretical concepts, models, and further structuring considerations that are used in historical climate impact research, which are especially fitting to the examined period. We distinguish between the impact of climate on society by time-scale in long-term, conjunctural or medium-term, and short-term impacts. Moreover, a simplified climate-society interaction model developed by Daniel Krämer is presented, as well as the concept of the Little Ice Age-type Impact (LIATIMP) by Christian Pfister and the vulnerability concept regarding climatic variability and extreme weather events. Furthermore, the paper includes a state-of-the-art application of the historical climate impact research and discussion of research gaps.

Continuous national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) time series for 195 countries: past observations (1850–2005) harmonized with future projections according to the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (2006–2100)

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) represents a widely used metric to compare economic development across time and space. GDP estimates have been routinely assembled only since the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, making comparisons with prior periods cumbersome or even impossible. In recent years various efforts have been put forward to re-estimate national GDP for specific years in the past centuries and even millennia, providing new insights of past economic development on a snapshot basis. In order to make this wealth of data utilizable across research disciplines, we here present a first continuous and consistent data set of GDP time series for 195 countries from 1850 to 2009, based mainly on data from the Maddison Project and other population and GDP sources. The GDP data is consistent with Penn World Tables v8.1 and future GDP projections from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), and freely available at https://doi.org/10.5880/pik.2017.003. To ease usability, we additionally provide GPD per capita data and further supplementary and data description files in the online archive. We utilize various methods to handle missing data and discuss the advantages and limitations of our methodology. Despite known shortcomings this data set provides valuable input e.g. for climate impact research in order to consistently analyze economic impacts from pre-industrial times to the future.

Climate impact research: beyond patchwork

Despite significant progress in climate impact research, the narratives that science can presently piece together of a 2, 3, 4, or 5 °C warmer world remain fragmentary. Here we briefly review past undertakings to characterise comprehensively and quantify climate impacts based on multi-model approaches. We then report on the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), a community-driven effort to compare impact models across sectors and scales systematically, and to quantify the uncertainties along the chain from greenhouse gas emissions and climate input data to the modelling of climate impacts themselves. We show how ISI-MIP and similar efforts can substantially advance the science relevant to impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and we outline the steps that need to be taken in order to make the most of the available modelling tools. We discuss pertinent limitations of these methods and how they could be tackled. We argue that it is time to consolidate the current patchwork of impact knowledge through integrated cross-sectoral assessments, and that the climate impact community is now in a favourable position to do so.