cc: ipcc@earth.usgcrp.gov date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 02:06:10 -0500 from: Richard Moss subject: Part II, Agenda items 4 and 5 to: tgcia@meto.gov.uk TimesDear All: This is the third or three messages I am sending on the TGCIA email conference. This one contains a few observations on the TAR, as well as an attachment--the strawman outline for the WG II TAR, which was emailed to WG II participants in the scoping meeting earlier today (The attachment is a microsoft word file; if you have trouble opening it, please let me know and we will send it to you in another format, or by fax--just indicate you preferrences). As you will see when you review the outline, the strawman proposal is to organize the WG II TAR into three broad sections: 1) State of Science Update; 2) Regional Vulnerability Analyses; and 3) Global Integration and Synthesis. This form of organization is intended to respond to the mandate given the report by the IPCC at the Plenary Session last September in the Maldives, as well as to respond to information needs raised directly by a number of governments. Please note that this outline is not intended to provide fine detail of what is to be covered in each chapter. Indeed, the strawman outline should be viewed as a starting point for discussion of the overall purposes and structure for our part of the TAR. We fully expect that the outline will be modified substantially through the contributions of scoping meeting participants and other experts such as yourselves over the coming weeks and months. Note that a number of the TGCIA members will be at the scoping meeting, and that we expect additional members to be added to writing teams in the next phase of preparation of the report. WG II scoping participants will soon be starting an email conference of their own to provide their initial reactions to the strawman outline. The TGCIA's recommendations on the TAR will be provided to them, either as part of the conference (if they are ready in time), or as part of the background materials sent to participants before the meeting. In addition, I would welcome comments from you (addressed to rmoss@usgcrp.gov) on the outline. Comments on TGCIA Agenda Item 4., Recommendations for TAR Proposals made by various TGCIA members can be accommodated in this broad outline, providing that there is a consensus among scoping participants to do so. For example, were it to be determined that WG II should include material on scenarios, as Linda Mearns has suggested, this material could be housed in the state of science evaluation of methods (chapter 2); Mike Hulme's suggestion to include a detailed description of the scenarios used in the regional vulnerability assessments could be included as part of the chapter describing the framework and methods used in conducting this assessment (chapter 5). My own view of this debate is that to the extent that the issue is evaluating methods for use in creating scenarios, the material covering this point should be included in WG I, as this is really their domain. The scenarios information in WG II should be limited to assessing application of these techniques in impacts analysis. Regarding the suggestion for study regions in the TAR, I agree that this should be discussed at the scoping meeting. However, I am personally skeptical that we will actually be able to do a very complete job of this in the TAR, but should begin to plan now, so that we might be ready to take this on in the Fourth Assessment Report. Additional Item: Report on interactions with Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A number of us (Cynthia Rosenzweig, Mike Hulme, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Arnulf Grubler, Tsuneyuki Morita, Hugh Pitcher, and myself--I hope I haven't left anyone out) have interacted over the last months in order to coordinate preparation of socio-economic scenarios for use in the IPCC TAR. The need to do this obvious--the climate/ socio-economic scenarios for impacts analysis that we are providing through the DDC should be as consistent as possible with the descriptions of "not implausible" potential future states of the world being developed by SRES to project emissions. >From the TGCIA perspective, cooperation with SRES is essential, for at the moment, we have no other option for generating updated socio-economic scenarios to accompany the climate scenarios on the DDC. Note that we have made the socio-economic projections underlying the IS92 scenarios (rather simple spreadsheets) available on the DDC. In addition, we have also included the baseline data that were produced by the WG II TSU for use in the Special Report on the Regional Impacts of Climate Change. At the last meeting of the SRES lead authors and modeling groups, we reached agreement that SRES modeling teams would be providing data from their modeling runs on the DDC website, as follows: Time slices Symbol… Times2020s Symbol… Times2050s Symbol… Times2100 Socio-economic scenario sets to be provided Symbol… TimesNew 1999 scenarios, representing each of the four storylines Regions Symbol… TimesReport results at the regional level of detail in the particular model used (this is more detailed than highly aggregated level of reporting that will be used in the SRES itself) Variables (source in parentheses--note that some variables, such as those in I., are standardized input assumptions, while others are produced by the integrated models used to generate the emissions scenarios) I. Demographic (use UN projections at national level?) I.1 Total Population I.2 Assumed annual growth rate for the period I.3 Population density I.4 Percentage population working age I.5 Percentage population urban I.6 Percentage population in coastal margins II. Economic variables (from IAMs) II.1 GDP/capita II.2 Assumed annual GDP growth rate II.3 Percentage population employed in agriculture II.4 Rate of growth of labor-force productivity III. Biophysical resource base (from IAMS) III.1 Gross caloric output/person to meet typical daily diet III.2 Land use (land under production for biomass energy?) III.3 Water availability per capita (with GCM community) I would like to ask Mike Hulme to comment on this hurriedly assembled report, as he was at the last day of the SRES meeting (I had to leave early to attend another meeting) and may have more detailed information on exactly when these data are expected to be made available. I would also hope that Mike might comment on the extensive discussions regarding which of the initial SRES results are expected to be made available to climate modeling groups. These were only completed on the last day of the meeting as well. Closing In closing, let me again thank Martin Parry and all TGCIA members who participated for their comments. The TGCIA has made an excellent contribution to the IPCC and the TAR because of all your efforts. Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\WG_II_outline_3June98.doc"