Valuing climate impacts in integrated assessment models: the MIT IGSM

Abstract

The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change is an organization for research, independent policy analysis, and public education in global environmental change. It seeks to provide leadership in understanding scientific, economic, and ecological aspects of this difficult issue, and combining them into policy assessments that serve the needs of ongoing national and international discussions. To this end, the Program brings together an interdisciplinary group from two established research centers at MIT: the Center for Global Change Science (CGCS) and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). These two centers bridge many key areas of the needed intellectual work, and additional essential areas are covered by other MIT departments, by collaboration with the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, and by short-and long-term visitors to the Program. The Program involves sponsorship and active participation by industry, government, and non-profit organizations. To inform processes of policy development and implementation, climate change research needs to focus on improving the prediction of those variables that are most relevant to economic, social, and environmental effects. In turn, the greenhouse gas and atmospheric aerosol assumptions underlying climate analysis need to be related to the economic, technological, and political forces that drive emissions, and to the results of international agreements and mitigation. Further, assessments of possible societal and ecosystem impacts, and analysis of mitigation strategies, need to be based on realistic evaluation of the uncertainties of climate science. This report is one of a series intended to communicate research results and improve public understanding of climate issues, thereby contributing to informed debate about the climate issue, the uncertainties, and the economic and social implications of policy alternatives. Titles in the Report Series to date are listed on the inside back cover.

An uncertainty approach to assessment of climate change impacts on the Zambezi River Basin

“…The MIT Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM; Reilly et al 2012) developed near-surface temperature and precipitation projections to 2050 at the zonal spatial scale . A Taylor expansion technique, described by Schlosser et al (2013), was used to expand from the zonal level of detail in the longitudinal direction.…”

A Public Finance Perspective on Climate Policy: Six Interactions That May Enhance Welfare

“…CBA in the context of climate change focuses on the optimal choice of a mitigation target, which is determined by weighing the opportunity costs of consumption foregone by investing into mitigation against the benefits of avoided damages from climate change, expressed as social costs of carbon, which are the economic damages resulting from a marginal increase in carbon emissions (the difference between costs and benefits gives the net costs, which are negative for the optimal mitigation path). In principle, this requires a detailed representation of a multitude of channels by which climate change may affect human welfare, such as a rising sea level, extreme weather events (for example storms, heat waves, droughts), water availability, the spread of diseases or agricultural yields (Reilly et al, 2013). Instead, stylized damage functions are standardly used to capture some of these effects (e.g.…”

Valuation of Adaptation Technology to Climate Change Based on Target Classification

“…When the process has ended, the accumulated net benefit from module 2 is subtracted from the accumulated damage from module 1, which makes the total damage of the target. Finally, the value of adaptation technology throughout life cycle of target structures is calculated by Equation (2).…”

“…Leary (1999) presented a framework for benefit/cost analysis for adaptation, considering uncertainty of benefits of adaptation and irreversibility of investments. Reilly et al (2013) assessed the impacts of climate change on a global scale. Shim et al (2004) conducted a study on the economic analysis of flood control projects, presenting Multi-Dimensional Flood Damage Analysis (MDFDA).…”