date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 09:50:40 +0100
from: "Nigel Arnell" <n.w.arnell@reading.ac.uk>
subject: QUEST-GSI and the Committee on Climate Change
to: "Tim   Wheeler" <t.r.wheeler@reading.ac.uk>, "Tim Osborn" <t.osborn@uea.ac.uk>, "Terry Dawson" <t.p.dawson@soton.ac.uk>, "Pete Smith" <pete.smith@abdn.ac.uk>, "Robert Nicholls" <r.j.nicholls@soton.ac.uk>, "Sari Kovats" <Sari.Kovats@lshtm.ac.uk>, <john.pinnegar@cefas.co.uk>, "Betts, Richard" <richard.betts@metoffice.gov.uk>, "Richard Harding" <rjh@ceh.ac.uk>, "Richard Taylor" <r.taylor@geog.ucl.ac.uk>, "Maria Noguer" <m.noguer@reading.ac.uk>, <sarah.cornell@bristol.ac.uk>, "Jo House" <jo.house@bristol.ac.uk>, "Evan Fraser" <E.D.G.Fraser@leeds.ac.uk>

   Dear all,


   As you may be aware the Committee on Climate Change
   ([1]http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/legislation/committee/index.htm#ro
   le) is charged with reviewing the government's 60% target for greenhouse gas emissions
   reductions. Central to this, of course, is an assessment of the impacts of different rates
   of climate change, and a key early task of the Committee is to review the evidence for
   impacts under different rates of climate change. This is a great opportunity for
   QUEST-GSI.....but unfortunately a bit early, because the first CCC report has to appear
   this autumn. Some of you are coming to a meeting in London next week (agenda attached for
   all for information), where we will have the opportunity to discuss issues with the CCC:
   I've already had a preliminary meeting. The CCC are still uncertain about issues such as
   which baseline socio-economic scenario to use, and there is great scope for us to help set
   their agenda.


   It would be extremely good if we could get some preliminary information in to the report,
   and provide more "definitive" projections of impacts under defined temperature changes for
   a likely "second edition" in 2009. How feasible would it be for your group to come up with
   first-approximation damage functions (showing impacts as a function of temperature) over
   the summer, for at least the priority subset of climate changes currently being produced by
   Tim Osborn? In the next few days I hope to circulate "final" "definitive" global
   socio-economic projections for population and GDP (I've got permission from IMAGE to use
   their latest IMAGE 2.3 population and GDP projections, which makes us nicely consistent
   with the other IMAGE data we are using and other initiatives such as the ADAM project).I
   can also circulate pre-preliminary examples of the sorts of things we should be producing,
   using some old climate scenarios with the new socio-economic characterisations.


   There is a possibility of some small top-up funds next year from the CCC to tailor outputs
   to particular CCC requirements....but this won't be clear for a while. It is quite likely
   that the CCC will get some climate stabilisation runs from the Hadley Centre, under certain
   emissions assumptions (using the simple Hadley Centre climate model, not the full GCM).
   There will probably be an opportunity for us to estimate impacts under these temperature
   pathways...


   Regards


   Nigel


   Professor Nigel Arnell

   Director

   Walker Institute for Climate System Research

   University of Reading

   Earley Gate

   Reading

   RG6 6BB

   UK


   +44-118-378-7392


   [2]www.walker-institute.ac.uk



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