Climate - IMAGE
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| Institution | PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), Netherlands, https://www.pbl.nl/en. |
| Solution concept | Partial equilibrium (price elastic demand) |
| Solution method | Simulation |
| Anticipation | Simulation modelling framework, without foresight. However, a simplified version of the energy/climate part of the model (called FAIR) can be run prior to running the framework to obtain data for climate policy simulations. |
IMAGE uses the simple climate model MAGICC 6.0 IMG_Meinshausen_2011aIMG_Meinshausen_2011b to simulate the effects of changing greenhouse gas emissions on atmospheric composition, radiative forcing and global mean temperature. MAGICC was used extensively in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth assessment reports of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in assessing a range of greenhouse gas concentration scenarios. Since publication of these reports, MAGICC has been updated in line with results from Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs).
There is still considerable uncertainty in climate change simulations, as illustrated by differences in results from various AOGCMs, in terms of mean global temperature, and even more so in geographical patterns of surface temperature and precipitation. By adjusting the values of a few of the model parameters, MAGICC 6.0 can reproduce timedependent responses of AOGCMs IMG_Meinshausen_2011aIMG_Meinshausen_2011b. This allows IMAGE to reflect the uncertainty in AOGCM results, and to provide plausible projections of future climate-change feedbacks and impacts.
The analysis of climate impacts and feedbacks requires location-specific temperature and precipitation changes. Thus, a pattern scaling technique is applied in IMAGE by combining MAGICC results with maps on climate change from the same AOGCMs assessed in AR4 IMG_IPCC_2007 and used for calibrating MAGICC. The consistent combination of AOGCM-specific parameter settings for MAGICC and matching geographical patterns of climate change make the dynamic results from IMAGE physically more consistent, and extend the range of uncertainties that can be covered to include future climate change.