Options Magazine, Summer 2022

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Climate Change 2022
Mitigation of Climate Change
WG I
Working Group I contribution to the
Sixth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
By Ansa Heyl
IIASA AND THE IPCC: PROVIDING A SOLID FOUNDATION
FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
Pioneering IIASA research into climate change in
the 1970s and 1980s played a key role in establishing
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) in 1988. Since then, IIASA scientists have
been authors and reviewers of all IPCC assessment
reports with their participation and input not only
contributing to, but also supporting the scientific
foundation of these reports.
As a multidisciplinary, international research
institute conducting policy-oriented research into
issues that are too large or complex to be solved
by a single country or academic discipline, IIASA is
fertile ground for producing IPCC authors. However,
the institute’s contributions to climate science
stretch back even further.
BREAKING NEW GROUND IN CLIMATE SCIENCE
A key conference held by IIASA under the theme,
“Carbon Dioxide, Climate, and Society” in 1978
culminated in one of the earliest international
assessments of the climate problem, with 40 authors
from 11 countries contributing technical papers.
Many of the issues raised at that seminal 1978
conference have been included in IPCC assessment
reports over the years and are still discussed today.
This includes, among others, the use of alternative,
renewable energy sources such as biomass; carbon
capture and storage; how to reduce the world’s energy
demand—and even uncertainty, which dominated and
still dominates every aspect of climate change from
emission rates, through environmental consequences
to the socioeconomic impacts themselves.
Apart from contributions to these and other critical
climate related topics, IIASA continues to set itself apart
as more than just a participant in IPCC assessments
through innovative research in the climate change
arena. Among these is a flagship publication by
IIASA researchers in Nature Climate Change in 2021,
summarizing the community effort on attainability and
costs of climate targets. This work critically informed
the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report and includes about
40% of all scenarios of the community scenarios
that were assessed. IIASA also organized an IPCC
scenario expert workshop in preparation of the Sixth
Assessment Report with more than 100 experts, and
hosts the Scenario Explorer and databases underlying
the Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports, as well as the
Special Report on 1.5°C as part of a memorandum
of understanding with the IPCC and the Integrated
Assessment Modeling Consortium.
“One of the main challenges in climate modeling
and scenarios is bridging from science to policy
from the long-term global to the short-term local,
www.iiasa.ac.at Summer 2022
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