The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Data Distribution Center (DDC) has released a series of Web
pages describing the new process for developing scenarios in support of climate
change research and the IPCC's Fifth Assessment. Scenarios describe plausible
trajectories of different aspects of the future needed to investigate the
potential consequences of anthropogenic climate change. The new scenario process
allows for parallel rather than sequential development of different models,
shortening the time required to develop scenarios and ensuring better
integration between socioeconomic driving forces, changes in the climate system,
and the vulnerability of natural and human systems.
The new DDC Web pages were developed and approved by the IPCC Task Group on
Data and Scenario Support for Impacts and Climate Analysis (TGICA) and the
IPCC Technical Support Units. The DDC is managed collaboratively by the British
Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC), the Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum (DKRZ) in
Germany, and the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
operated by CIESIN.
