Project Overview

Our Team

NCAR : Peter Lawrence · Simone Tilmes · Andrea Smith · David Lawrence · Monica Morrison

Arizona State University : Michael Barton

Louisiana State University : Cheryl Harrison

Research Description

Humanity is facing growing risks due to climate change. However, there are no obvious political pathways that can limit warming to 1.5°C, a requirement to prevent detrimental impacts on human and natural systems. Given the severity of climate impacts being already experienced, there is a need to explore how a portfolio of combined climate intervention and response strategies including mitigation, carbon dioxide removal, adaptation, and solar radiation management could achieve a climate-resilient future. Despite the urgency for developing a coordinated research program to assess a multitude of combined responses to climate change, such a program does not currently exist in the US. The convergent research program we are developing requires the integration of researchers from a range of disciplines, which are currently separated and siloed, with diverse community partners.

The first stages of this program have already been achieved through recent activities performed by the NCAR/UCAR Community Climate Intervention Strategies (CCIS) program. From this initial effort, we will co-develop the scientific capabilities to extensively evaluate portfolios of climate intervention strategies responsive to stakeholder needs and values, assessing their impacts and benefits to human and natural systems, and developing strategies to translate and contextualize the scientific products for diverse stakeholder use. The project has three main objectives:

1) Advancing state-of-science climate intervention studies through exploring the assumptions, model deficiencies, interactions, and impact assessment methods of a portfolio of climate intervention scenarios that restrict warming to 1.5 degrees C from CMIP6 baseline pathways, with the climate intervention scenarios based on methods already developed by the project investigators;

2) Developing an approach for co-production of modeling products from the Earth system evaluations through extensive stakeholder engagement to further actionable research into combined climate intervention scenarios and their evaluation;

3) Designing scenario and impact assessment toolkits for the wider community to engage in investigating intervention strategies that are responsive to their unique information needs and priorities through the extension of and adaptation of our co-designed scenarios and assessment frameworks.

This project brings together multiple areas of research and disciplines that are currently working in isolation to investigate climate intervention strategies. The interdisciplinary approach will transform the climate interventions research landscape, moving it to more integrated approaches for research and assessments. Specifically, this will be through the establishment of a shared conceptual and theoretical framework for scenario generation, model application, impact assessment, and stakeholder translation. The generation of the conceptual and theoretical frameworks, as well as the co-productive approach, requires the deep integration of knowledge from a plurality of disciplines and sectors. The project focuses on scientific research activities concerned with climate outcomes responsive to the priorities and needs of diverse stakeholder groups, and the broader scientific community. This project broadens and sustains participation from a variety of disciplines and stakeholder communities through immersive interdisciplinary science, including experiences for graduate researchers, and workshops for existing research communities. The research proposed requires engaging with national and international stakeholder communities with policy influence and scientific practitioners distanced from climate science to integrate their priorities and information needs into the research design. This engagement will enable the co-creation of scientific knowledge on combined climate intervention strategies and their potential impacts on human and natural systems.

Primary Research Questions

What are the available combined responses to climate change that can realize a just and secure climate-resilient future?

How can we build a research program for understanding these combined responses?

Do climate intervention strategies have a role to play in these responses? And, if so, which of these responses, and what specific roles?

How can this information be provided as actionable scientific products responsive to diverse stakeholder values, needs, and priorities?

Convergence Research Process

This project is made up of four iterations of a process that includes the following elements: 1) scenario generation, 2) Earth system model simulations, 3) impact assessment, 4) knowledge translation for stakeholder usefulness and usability, and 5) component evaluation and revision.

Scenario generation: We have four sets of scenarios to design and quantify for the project, one for each iteration: a) baseline scenarios, 2) individual intervention scenarios, 3) combined intervention scenarios, and 4) stakeholder-determined scenarios. For each of these, we will construct narratives with a team of experts that will then be translated into quantitative data for use as forcings for our Earth system model—the Community Earth System Model (CESM).

Earth system model simulations: Once our narratives are converted into forcing data, we will run a series of ensembles for each one of our scenarios. The data from these simulations will be made available to the wider research community. We intend to have CESM configured to allow for the assessment of impacts on the carbon cycle, ice sheets, ocean biogeochemistry, and agriculture, as well as urban areas and fire.

An important component of our Earth system model framework is the inclusion and integration of a Societal Dynamics model, being designed and developed by Arizona State University. The SDM will take information on impacts analyzed using CESM raw output and, using co-constructed decision algorithms, determine whether different actions (defined currently as nations) would continue to endorse or move a rejection of the deployment of an intervention strategy. From this, we can begin to ascertain not only the responses from the physical, biological, and ecological systems, but also human social and political systems, to present a more comprehensive understanding of the consequences of different individual and combined strategies.

Impact assessment: The output of the simulations will be used to evaluate a plurality of impacts that are determined to be relevant for societal purposes by our community partners. For these impact assessments we will be co-designing key metrics for those impacts of interest and concern to the community partners, as well as providing the analyzed data to the wider community for use in their own research.

Knowledge translation: This final active step is the conveyance of the knowledge co-created in the preceding steps in a form most suitable for adoption and use within the decision contexts worked in by stakeholders. It is the last step in the construction of meaningful scientific products and represents the development of the “packaging and contextualization” of the quantitative scientific products generated by the modeling experiments. An important issue to address in this element of the process is to effectively communicate the appropriateness of different findings for use in decision-making contexts, and provide transparency about the adequacy of the research products for use in societal contexts.

Component evaluation: This final step provides us with the opportunity to evaluate the usefulness and usability of the scientific products generated in one iteration before engaging in the next iteration of the Societal and Earth system evaluation component. This will also allow us to think about lessons learned in each iteration of the process and adapt the subsequent iteration accordingly.

Project Contact

For additional information about our project, or to set up a meeting to discuss the possibility of collaborating, please contact Monica Ainhorn Morrison (Project Specialist) at monicamo@ucar.edu.