20-22 June 2022, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
The Forum on Scenarios for Climate and Societal Futures brings together a diverse set of communities who are using or developing scenarios for use in climate change and sustainability analysis to:
- exchange experiences, ideas, and lessons learned;
- identify opportunities for synergies and collaboration;
- reflect on the use of scenarios; and
- identify knowledge gaps for future research.
The Scenarios Forum is open to anyone using, developing, or interested in scenarios to carry out research or policy analysis related to climate change and sustainability. Proposals for sessions are now being accepted (https://scenariosforum.org/call-sessions/), through November 15, 2021. A call for presentation abstracts and meeting registration will follow later.
Sessions can address issues related to application of scenarios to particular research, policy, or assessment domains; development of scenario information; climate information for use in scenarios; assessments of scenario (and other) approaches; or other topics. Sessions formats are Research Sessions, with a number of presentations, or Workshop Sessions, focusing on discussing a specific topic.
Participation by a wide range of research communities is desired, including (but not limited to) sustainability science, climate change impacts/adaptation/vulnerability, climate science and modeling, integrated assessment modeling, biodiversity, finance, futures studies, risk management, governance, and other areas of social science. Sessions that address the use of scenarios, for example in policy-making or in scientific assessments, are also encouraged. Work that is relevant to multiple research communities is of particular interest.
An important, but not exclusive, focus of the meeting will be the ongoing process of developing, updating and using the “Scenarios Framework” for fostering integrated climate change and sustainability research. As part of that framework, a new set of societal futures, the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), has been developed and used by integrated assessment models to produce global energy, land use, and emissions scenarios based on them. Climate models, mainly through CMIP6 ScenarioMIP, have simulated alternative climate outcomes driven by those emission scenarios, adding to and updating the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs).
The Forum is presented by the International Committee on New Integrated Climate Change Assessment Scenarios (ICONICS) and the hosted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
