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Thematic Guide to Integrated Assessment Modeling
Reproduced, with permission, from:
Rotmans, J., M. Hulme and E.T. Downing. "Climate change implications for Europe: An application of the ESCAPE Model" Global Environmental Change 4(2): 97.
Climate change implications for Europe
An application of the ESCAPE Model
Global Environmental Change 1994 4 (2) 97
Jan Rotmans, Mike Hulme and Thomas E Downing
Abstract
Policy makers, charged both with identifying possible national response
strategies to climate change and with negotiating international conventions
and protocols, need tools which enable them to estimate the implications
for climate change of a wide range of policy options and which summarize
the uncertainties surrounding global climate change. One such tool, recently
constructed for the Environment Directorate of the Commission of the European
Communities,1 consists of an interactive
climate change impact assessment model called ESCAPE. This paper describes
the model framework and illustrates the use of ESCAPE using a range of
input scenarios reflecting different global policy, economic and technological
futures. Three important characteristics of the global climate change problem
are well illustrated: past emissions of greenhouse gases and the inertia
of the global development path have committed the world to future warming
irrespective of current and near-future policy interventions; the efficacy
of a climate policy implemented solely within the EC on altering the course
of future climate change is very small; and the impacts of climate change
on the economy and environment of the European Community differ markedly
between northern and southern Europe.
1 The European Community (EC) officially became the European Union with
the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty. For consistency, the former name
is used here, since the project was completed under the auspices of the
EC.