Emissions Scenarios - IPCC

354 Open Process
Open Process
The Terms of Reference of this Special Report on Emissions
Scenarios (SRES) include a so-called "open process" to
stimulate input from a community of experts much broader
than the writing team (see Appendices I and П). IPCC
documents should take into account as many scientific
perspectives as possible. This is particularly important in the
area of scenarios, for which views on the plausibility of various
aspects of the described futures and their interactions can differ
between regions, between different sectors of society, and
between individual experts. The SRES web site
(sres.ciesin.org) was created to facilitate the open process and
to help gain input from a community of expeits much broader
than the writing team.
The web site:
Includes a description of SRES acdvhies and the
scenaiio development process.
Provides detailed information on the four marker
scenarios and their storylines.
• Offers facilities to view and plot scenario driving forces
and emissions.
• Offers facilities to receive feedback from the open
process.
The open process lasted from June 1998 to January 1999. As a
result of the interest in SRES scenarios, the web site is
accessible to acquire updated information about SRES marker
scenarios. For other reasons and the input received so far, the
information on the web site has been improved and updated
considerably. The writing team recommends that the web site
also be maintained in the future so that it is available to access
updated infonnation on SRES scenarios. However, this will
require additional resources.
The four marker scenarios were posted on the IPCC web site
(sres.ciesin.org) in June 1998. The submissions invited through
the open process and web site fell into three categories:
Table VI-1: SRES web site access summary by month, from
M y 1998 to March 1999.
Month
Unique non-CIESIN Total non-CIESIN
hosts connected www accesses
July 1998 (20-31) 17 65
August 1998 143 2,214
September 1998 610 6,217
October 1998 425 4,083
November 1998 313 3,696
December 1998 455 5,170
January 1999 497 5,946
February 1999 468 5,764
March 1999(1-5) 103 1,064
Total 3,031 34,219
Most of the submissions received fall into the first two
categories above. Altogether, more than 34,000 accesses to the
SRES web site were registered by April 1999 from some 3,000
unique hosts that were connected. Tables VI-1 and VI-2 and
Figure VI-1 give more detail about the number of monthly
accesses between July 1998 and March 1999 and about
accesses from different countries and temtories during the
same period. Tables VI-3 and VI-4 give details of the
preliminary marker scenarios.
The web site is managed by the Center for International Earth
Science Information Network (CIESIN) in the US, in
collaboration with the Energy Research Foundation (ECN) in
the Netherlands, the Technical Support Unit (TSU) of Working
Group III on Mitigation of IPCC at the National Institute of
Public Health and Environment (RIVM) in the Netherlands,
and the Intemational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA) in Austria.
Additional scenarios published in the reviewed
literature that had not been included in the scenario
database (see Appendix V).
New scenarios based on the SRES marker scenarios.
General suggestions to improve the work of the SRES
writing team as posted on the web site (preferably
based on referenced literature).
The submissions were used to revise the marker scenarios and
to develop additional alternatives within each of the four
scenario families. The result is a more complete, refined set of
new scenarios that reflects the broad spectrum of modeling
approaches and regional perspectives. The preliminary
scenarios posted on the web site were provided to climate
modelers also, with the approval of the IPCC Bureau.