This paper analyzes the transition costs of moving towards a low carbon society when the second-best nature of the economy is accounted for. We emphasize the consequences on mitigation costs of considering the interplay between a) technical systems inertia, including slow infrastructure turnover...

The scientific community is now developing a new set of scenarios, referred to as Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) that will be contrasted along two axes: challenges to mitigation, and challenges to adaptation. This paper proposes a methodology to develop SSPs with a “backwards”...

The new scenario framework for climate change research envisions combining pathways of future radiative forcing and their associated climate changes with alternative pathways of socioeconomic development in order to carry out research on climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. Here...

This paper describes the scenario matrix architecture that underlies a framework for developing new scenarios for climate change research. The matrix architecture facilitates addressing key questions related to current climate research and policy-making: identifying the effectiveness of...

The scientific community is developing new global, regional, and sectoral scenarios to facilitate interdisciplinary research and assessment to explore the range of possible future climates and related physical changes that could pose risks to human and natural systems; how these changes could...