Research
A major challenge for climate impact research at the global level is a lack of methods for aggregation and synthesis of climate impacts across regions and sectors. While there is a wide spectrum of region-specific and sector-specific case studies on climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation strategies, no clear global picture across regions and sectors has yet emerged. Moreover, there is a lack of clear metrics to compare climate impacts across sectors and to systematically assess climate risks.
The RD2 research agenda ranges from well-established single-sector and multi-sector climate impact assessments at the regional level to innovative single-sector and multi-sector climate impact assessments at the global level. Cross-scale interactions between global modeling approaches and comparative regional case studies are explicitly taken into account. Long-term global scenarios with a high spatial resolution on socio-economic development, climate impact assessments, and adaptation strategies are used as inputs by regional and sectoral case studies. Sector-specific regional assessments systematically contribute their detailed results to highly aggregated global syntheses of climate impacts and costs. Global-scale assessments can guide the selection of regional hot-spots for detailed impacts studies. Multi-sector impact aggregation and damage assessments take advantage of strong interdisciplinarity in experienced RD2 research teams.
Overarching research questions in RD2:
- What are climate change impacts and socio-economic damages at 2, 3, 4 or 5°C global warming?
- What are the risks of severe climate change impacts?
- How can multi-sector impacts be linked and aggregated?
- What are synergies between adaptation and mitigation?
RD2 research structure
RD2 research is conducted in three research areas with seven flagship projects. Three cross-cutting activities establish cooperation between RD2 flagships as well as the other PIK Research Domains.
