We had a productive and enjoyable (albeit hot!) three days at the ISIMIP cross-sectoral workshop at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research on 22-24 June, 2016.
The workshop kicked off with a joint session with the ENGAGE workshop, which looked at challenges in calculating the economic costs of climate change. Keynote contributions were given by IPCC Working Group II co-chair Hans-Otto Pörtner, Purdue University Professor Dominique van der Mensburgghe, PIK Research Domain chair Hermann Lotze-Campen and Stanford University Professor Marshall Burke. A lively discussion followed these presentations, seeding plans for closer collaborations between impacts modellers and economists.
We then heard from the ISIMIP sector coordinators about progress in each of 11(!) sectors on performing historical simulations based on observed climate input-data sets. It was an impressive account of just how much ISIMIP has grown in scope over the past years. These sector reports were accompanied by presentations on studies using these simulation data, many of which will submitted for publication in the planned Focus Issue of the journal Environmental Research Letters (ERL).
The workshop then turned its attentions to how ISIMIP can contribute to the scientific basis for the IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. We discussed a proposed cross-sectoral scenario design for all ISIMIP sectors, which is now being iterated in collaboration with the sector coordinators and the cross-sectoral science team.
The presentation slides can be found on the workshop website.
